I 


Neighbors 
Henceforth 


&£&* 


« 


The  fire  shall  ever  be 
burning  upon  the  altar; 
it  shall  never  go  out. 

LEV.  6,  13. 


Owen 
Wister 


NEIGHBORS  HENCEFORTH 


BY   OWEN   WISTER 


Mother 
Lin  McLean 
The  Virginian 
Lady  Baltimore 
Philosophy  Four 
Padre  Ignacio 
A  Straight  Deal 
Red  Men  and  White 
The  Jimmy  John  Boss 
Members  op  the  Family 
U.  S.  Grant,  a  Biography 
The  Pentecost  of  Calamity 
The  Seven  Ages  of  Washington 
Journey  in  Search  of  Christmas 
The  Dragon  of  Wantley:  His  Tail 
How  Doth  the  Simple  Spelling  Bee 
Indispensable  Information  for  Infants;   or, 
Easy  Entrance  to  Education 


Neighbors    Henceforth 


BY 

OWEN  WISTER 

Of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Letters 

Membre  correspondant  de  la  Societe  de  Gens  de  Lettree 

Honorary  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Soeiety  of  Literature 


12*  to  gotft 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1922 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,    1922, 


By    THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  printed.    Published  August,  1922. 


PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 


DC 

1L 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  M.  C.  W. 


The  plight  of  France,  the  deed  of  Germany,  and 
the  international  destiny  of  the  United  States,  are 
the  main  themes  of  this  volume,  which  closes  a  series 
of  three,  begun  with  The  Pentecost  of  Calamity, 
followed  by  A  Straight  Deal. 

Philadelphia, 
Decoration  Day,  1922. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 

PART  FIRST 
IN  THE  FOOTSTEPS   OP   THE  HUN 

PAGE 

I.  Faces  and  a  Scar 3 

II.  Victims  Various 6 

III.  The  Fragments  that  Remain — 1 11 

IV.  Life  Flickering 22 

V.  An  Inn  of  the  Soul 25 

VI.     The  Fragments  that  Remain — 2 42 

VII.     Some  Peace  Conferences 72 

VIII.    Le  Petit  Due 87 

IX.    Kansas  on  an  Island 97 

X.    A  Glimpse  of  the  Poilu 109 

XI.     Transfusion  from  America 116 

XII.     Ludendorff's  Pocket  125 

XIII.  The  Great  Shrine 136 

XIV.  The  Towers  in  the  Night 151 

XV.     Uplift  157 

XVI.     Chemin  de  fer  de  l'Est 174 

XVII.     Bar-le-Duc    190 

XVIII.     Along  the  Sacred  Way 197 

XIX.     Where  We  Slept  Well 217 

XX.     The  Cook  and  the  Doughboy 227 

XXI.     Last  Lap  to  the  Armistice 234 

XXII.     Verdun   267 

ix 


X 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 


PART   SECOND 
AFTER   TWO   YEARS 

PAGE 

XXIII.  Old  Acquaintance 281 

XXIV.  Over  the  Spilled  Milk 295 

XXV.     By  Their  Fruits 313 

XXVI.  Militaristic?    348 

XXVII.  Idle?    Well  Off? 354 

XXVIII.  The  Brain  of  One  Dimension 397 

XXIX.  Can  These  Bones  Live? 410 

Appendix  A — The   Supreme  Council   Differ  About 

Upper  Silesia 421 

Appendix  B— Foch  Speaks  His  Mind 435 


PART  FIRST 
IN   THE   FOOTSTEPS   OF    THE   HUN 


NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 


FACES  AND   A   SCAR 

As  we  went  along  the  straight  road,  I  began  to  see 
what  was  not  there,  while  what  was  there  dissolved 
slowly  away  from  my  open  eyes.  The  April  night, 
full  of  sounds  and  storm,  had  dropped  upon  the  hills 
one  last  thin  veil  of  snow,  and  this  still  stretched  its 
gleamy  film  over  their  ridges.  Below,  it  was  gone 
from  the  wide  flat  lands,  where  blossoms  expanded 
beneath  the  sun  of  the  April  day.  These  came  by 
like  white  clouds  caught  in  the  twigs  of  the  fruit 
trees.  Along  the  road  as  we  went,  they  showed  above 
the  tops  of  the  high  French  walls,  they  shone  mistily 
across  the  flat  French  distance.  Among  the  taller 
trees,  in  the  heights  of  the  poplars  and  the  willows, 
hung  like  a  breath  the  faintly  tinted  web  that  be- 
tokened sap  stirring,  life  awakening,  leaves  invisible 
but  soon  to  come.  Every  early  delicate  hue  of  field 
and  garden  and  wood  beamed  through  skein  upon 
skein  of  weaving  exhalations.  On  either  side  the 
constantly  straight  road,  I  watched  between  the 
trunks  of  the  poplars  acres  upon  acres,  where  wet 
new  grass  glinted,  brooks  ran  full,  and  far-off  tufts 
of  spring  color,  like  puffs  of  smoke,  seemed  enmeshed 
in  the  tangle  of  the  copses. 

3 


4  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

How  unlike  was  this  to  England,  the  England  I 
had  just  seen!  Yes,  bnt  one  strange,  deep  likeness 
there  was.  I  had  not  walked  for  five  minutes  in  Eng- 
land after  setting  foot  on  shore — I  had  not  walked 
for  two — before  I  was  aware  of  the  changed  English 
face.  Once  aware  of  it,  it  was  something  I  should 
never  forget.  In  the  trains,  in  the  streets,  in  the 
houses,  in  the  churches — especially  in  the  churches — 
you  could  read  that  the  English  face  had  looked  upon 
something,  and  was  changed.  When  they  were  talk- 
ing, even  when  they  were  laughing,  it  did  not  quite  go, 
this  change  in  look;  and  it  always  wholly  returned. 
Soldiers  had  it,  and  civilians,  men  and  women; 
not  all  the  children,  but  even  some  of  them.  It 
corresponded  to  nothing  that  they  ever  said.  Their 
talk  was  usual,  cheerful,  they  referred  to  sad  things 
lightly,  and  they  joked  and  enjoyed  your  joke.  The 
one  thing  that  they  never  said  was  the  thing  which 
their  faces  said  for  them.  Did  they  know  this? 
Could  I  ask  them?  Never.  People  of  old  that  saw 
Medusa's  head  were  turned  to  stone.  I  thought  of 
this  myth  and  its  marvellous  symbol  often  in  the  first 
davs;  but  it  was  not  Medusa's  head  that  had  been 
looked  upon.  The  English  were  farther  away  from 
being  stone  than  ever  I  had  seen  them.  Turn  to  old 
photographs  of  Northerners  and  Southerners  in  our 
Civil  War,  and  in  the  faces  of  those  dedicated  boys, 
and  of  their  fathers  and  mothers,  you  will  find  the 
counterpart  of  what  I  saw  in  the  English  face.  Com- 
pared with  those  of  our  Civil  "War,  the  general  Amer- 
ican face  of  today  is  an  empty  countenance.  Then, 
on  coming  from  England  to  France,  the  same  thing 
had  been  visible  at  once.  Those  who  examined  our 
passports  on  the  quay,  those  who  opened  our  bag- 


FACES   AND   A   SCAR  5 

gage,  the  porters  who  then  carried  it,  the  woman 
from  whom  I  bought  coffee  and  bread  at  the  station, 
and  the  woman  at  the  bookstall  on  the  platform — in 
the  faces  of  them  all,  whether  they  talked,  smiled,  or 
were  silent,  was  what  I  had  seen  in  England,  what 
I  had  not  seen  at  home.  The  Parisians  had  it,  too,  in 
the  hotels,  the  shops,  the  cafes.  I  ceased  to  see  the 
kilometre  stones  as  we  passed  them  on  this  April 
forenoon,  or  the  blossoms,  or  the  fields ;  my  memory 
showed  me  only  the  French  faces,  of  women  or  of 
men,  belonging  to  every  class.  The  look  they  wore 
was  like  a  sort  of  language  which  did  not  need  to  be 
spoken,  which  needed  no  translation.  It  was  a  com- 
mon language  to  both  French  and  English,  and  they 
all  understood  it. 

Suddenly,  in  the  green  field  by  which  we  were  pass- 
ing on  that  long  straight  road,  an  object  broke  my 
reverie.  It  was  a  charred,  half-roasted  aeroplane, 
lying  there  like  a  great  dead  black  bat.  It  was  a 
symbol,  like  Medusa's  head.  The  Huns  had  never 
been  able  to  walk  as  near  Paris  as  this,  but  they  had 
sailed  here  through  the  air,  dropping  flames  and 
death  during  four  hideous  years.  To  my  fancy  now, 
as  we  went  along  that  straight  highway,  the  trees 
with  their  blossoms,  the  hills  with  their  snow,  the  flat 
country  veiled  with  the  tender  heralding  hues  of 
spring,  all  nature,  seemed  to  wear  the  look  of  the 
English  and  French  faces. 


II 


VICTIMS     VARIOUS 


Again  for  a  while  I  watched  it,  this  avenue  between 
the  high  poplars,  broad  where  we  were,  narrowing  to 
a  line  far  ahead  in  the  April  haze.  There  was  no 
breeze.  The  air  lay  limp  after  the  night's  long  tur- 
bulence, but  our  speed  brought  a  sharp  wind  against 
the  face.  I  watched  the  houses  and  villages.  La 
Chapelle-en-Serval  came  and  was  gone,  and  Pont- 
arme ;  after  which  we  went  through  some  lean  woods. 
These  were  empty,  so  were  the  fields,  so  was 
everything.  France  was  here — but  where  were  the 
French?  That  crumpled  aeroplane,  far  behind  us 
now,  gave  the  answer.  It  was  rare  to  see  man  or 
woman  dotting  the  flat  spaces.  So  little  motion  of 
human  beings  there  was,  that  each  occurrence  of  it 
caught  the  eye.  Even  the  village  streets  stared 
somewhat  blankly  because  they  were  so  nearly  bare 
of  people.  Paris  streets  had  swarmed.  Every  pave- 
ment had  been  a  jungle  of  men  and  women.  The 
crowd  seemed  to  obscure  the  very  architecture.  One 
stood  a  long  while  waiting  for  a  vacant  seat  to  dine, 
and  the  trains  underground  were  congested  thick 
with  passengers.  There,  in  Paris,  one  had  met 
the  aeroplane  in  various  symbolic  guises.  By 
the  window  in  the  bank  where  I  got  my  money,  stood 
a  young  messenger  with  one  eye  sunk  in  blankness, 
and  black  gloves  upon  his  artificial  hands.  Walking 
about  in  the  room,  or  seated,  were  figures  with 

6 


VICTIMS   VARIOUS  7 

crutches,  and  empty  sleeves,  and  limping  mechanical 
gaits.  Nothing  had  seemed  the  matter  with  the 
smiling  fellow  who  answered  my  bell,  took  my  clothes, 
knocked  on  my  door  at  the  appointed  hour,  until  his 
charming  cheerfulness  and  succulent  pronunciation 
led  me  one  day  to  say : 

"You're  from  the  South,  I  can  hear  it." 

"Yes,  monsieur.  From  Toulouse.  Monsieur 
should  make  us  a  visit.  It  is  not  France  here,  we 
are  more  amiable  than  these  Parisians.  Paris  is  not 
amiable." 

"You're  very  far  from  home." 

"Yes,  indeed,  monsieur.  One  must  do  what  one 
can.     Oh,  I  shall  go  back. ' ' 

Then  I  learned  of  his  three  wounds  and  that  one  of 
these  was  still  a  living  pain.  But  as  the  days  passed 
this  pain  was  growing  less,  he  was  going  to  be  quite 
well  and  strong.  He  told  me,  too,  that  once  for 
twenty-four  hours  he  had  been  buried  with  some 
comrades  by  the  bursting  of  a  shell.  "We  thought 
that  was  the  finish,  but  they  dug  us  out  in  time.  I 
shall  be  able  to  do  heavier  work  as  soon  as  this  gets 
all  right ' ' — and  he  touched  his  body  lightly.  If  in  his 
valiant  smiling  spirit  there  was  a  sore  spot,  he  never 
revealed  it. 

In  Paris,  it  needed  but  to  fall  into  friendly  talk  like 
this  with  almost  any  man  at  all,  except  the  very  old, 
and  you  learned  that  he  had  paid  his  toll  of  blood. 
He  had  paid  it  in  nineteen-fourteen,  or  fifteen,  or 
sixteen,  seventeen,  eighteen — sometimes  in  several  of 
these  years ;  and  often  he  had  brothers  who  had  paid 
the  final  toll.  Now  and  then  his  women  had  paid 
women's  toll,  and  not  infrequently  his  house  and 
village,  like  his  brothers,  were  come  to  dust.    To  you 


8  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

who  read  this,  how  can  I  impart  what  hearing  it  was 
like,  face  to  face  with  those  who  had  lived  what  they 
told?  It  can  not  be  done.  I  can  not  make  you  hear 
them  any  more  that  I  can  make  you  see  that  crumpled 
aeroplane,  lying  like  a  scar  on  the  clean  fields.  It 
was  the  first  broken  refuse,  the  first  dead  ember  of 
war  that  I  met;  and  all  the  mounds  and  miles  of 
extinction  that  I  was  presently  to  look  at  and  remem- 
ber for  ever,  have  not  obliterated  this  stark  evil 
image,  this  plague-spot  upon  the  face  of  spring. 

Senlis  came  and  went.  War  signs  were  here  more 
plentiful,  yet  not  enough  to  jog  me  back  to  the  sights 
of  the  road.  We  passed  Villeneuve-sur-Verberie. 
These  names  I  heard,  and  for  a  moment  saw  the 
places,  but  remember  nothing  of  their  aspect.  I  was 
travelling  forty-nine  years  away ;  I  was  sailing  up  the 
Rhine  that  day  in  1870  when  that  war  began ;  I  was 
seeing  Bismarck's  locomotives  puffing  by,  linked  for 
mobilization ;  I  was  hearing  that  hysterical  shout  of 
false  alarm  from  a  man  in  the  skiff  on  the  river : 

"Die  Franzosen  sind  zu  Bingen!" 

Thus  this  frightened  German  had  raved  as  he  stood 
swinging  his  arms  in  the  middle  of  the  Rhine  to  warn 
our  steamer  back.  It  had  raised  amongst  the  pas- 
sengers a  flutter  and  a  suspense,  all  pleasure  to  me. 
The  events  that  followed  upon  this  day  during  many 
months  had  been  all  pleasure  to  me,  because  I  under- 
stood the  significance  of  none  of  them:  our  boat's 
unhindered  voyage  up  the  Rhine,  near  which,  in  that 
war,  no  French  ever  came;  our  stay  at  Mainz;  our 
thwarted  plan  for  Oberammergau ;  our  flight  from 
Munich  to  Lindau  upon  a  long,  crowded  train  of 
travellers  likewise  seeking  in  haste  a  neutral  country ; 
our  crossing  of  the  lake  to  Romanshorn ;  then  Switz- 


VICTIMS   VARIOUS  9 

erland;  and  soon  for  me  the  boarding-school  of 
Hofwyl,  near  Berne.  Of  less  importance  to  me  then 
than  my  studies  and  my  home-sickness  was  the  public 
news.  Older  people  spoke  of  Gravelotte  and  Sedan. 
I  did  not  then  connect  these  names  with  Bismarck's 
locomotives.  Those  were  a  picture,  while  names  of 
distant  battles  and  surrenders  had  no  reality  for  me. 
Reality  of  the  locomotive  sort  came  next  with  another 
set  of  pictures  at  that  Hofwyl  school.  Our  long  stone 
house  wherein  we  both  lived  and  studied  faced  west, 
and  the  setting  sun  blinked  upon  it  through  a  grove 
of  trees.  Eastward  at  our  back  the  open  land  sloped 
slowly  down  for  about  a  mile  to  a  lake,  itself  about  a 
mile  long  and  half  as  wide.  Flanking  our  right  was 
the  gymnasium  in  a  big  sort  of  granary,  slightly  in 
advance  of  the  front  line  of  the  house.  In  this  I 
know  not  how  many  French  soldiers  came  to  be 
barracked.  They  had  fled  across  the  border,  from 
Belfort  if  I  remember,  into  Switzerland,  and  here 
they  had  been  interned.  They  were  drilled  each  day. 
They  used  to  be  drawn  up  in  front  of  the  granary,  and 
we  would  go  and  watch  them  and  hear  them  answer 
to  the  roll-call.  Their  faces  were  grave,  unhappy, 
little  washed,  little  shaved,  their  uniforms  dingy, 
their  voices,  as  they  responded,  rather  wild  and 
strange.  They  were  a  little  piece  of  the  rags  of 
Napoleon  Ill's  Empire.  Bismarck's  locomotives  had 
torn  it  and  these  lives  to  shreds — though  this  I  took 
in  not  then,  but  long  after.  What  I  then  took  in  was 
just  the  pictures,  the  daily  scenes:  the  white  snow, 
the  black  trees,  the  red  sparks  of  setting  sun ;  the  long 
gaunt  lines  of  the  schoolhouse  and  granary ;  we  boys 
in  our  uniforms  staring  at  the  drill;  the  dingy 
unhappy  interned,  their  hairy  faces,  their  strange 


10  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

voices,  their  winter  breath;  and  then,  one  day,  we 
boys  running  to  the  east  side  of  the  house,  where  we 
watched  one  of  the  interned  French  trying  to  escape. 
He  was  a  dot  on  the  frozen  lake,  other  dots  were  on 
the  land,  and  puffs  of  smoke  behind  him  came  from 
the  guns,  as  he  struggled  to  get  away — and  he  did  not 
succeed.  You  may  say  that  Bismarck's  locomotives 
caught  him,  after  all. 

"Well,  well.  Thus  near  the  beginning  of  my  days 
and  thus  again  near  their  end,  I  had  seen  the  symbols 
of  Germany's  murdering,  mangling  plunge:  puffing 
engines,  victorious  then,  the  bones  of  a  wrecked 
aeroplane  just  now.  A  Germany  truculent,  but  as 
yet  unpoisoned  in  1870,  a  malign,  putrescent  Germany 
this  time.  Was  she  now  cured  of  her  evil  dream? 
Was  the  world  henceforth  to  be  able  to  breathe 
naturally  ?  I  saw  a  stream  and  a  broken  bridge ;  by 
the  side  of  this  we  crossed  a  make-shift  bridge,  got 
out  for  a  noon  meal,  and  after  it  set  forth  back  across 
the  river  to  walk  in  the  streets  of  the  town. 


Ill 

THE   FRAGMENTS   THAT  REMAIN 1 

How  suddenly  it  came!  What  must  the  noise  of 
shells  be?  On  the  ninth  day  of  the  siege  of  Verdun 
I  have  been  told  that  almost  every  soldier  was  crying. 
That  is  what  noise  can  do.  During  four  months 
there — four  months,  one  hundred  and  twenty  change- 
less days — ten  thousand  shells  each  day — eight-inch 
shells  and  upward — fell  upon  the  Verdun  fortresses, 
Vaux  and  Douamont.  One  hundred  and  eleven  days 
of  this  shattering  noise  were  still  ahead  of  those 
French  soldiers  who  were  crying  on  the  ninth  day — 
still  ahead,  that  is,  for  such  as  lived  it  out.  I  stared 
at  the  mute  wreck  which  the  shells  had  made  in 
Compiegne.  Since  November  war  had  been  silenced, 
noise  was  dead,  the  deafening  years  that  France  had 
heard,  and  through  which  she  had  been  able  to  keep 
her  heart  undaunted  and  her  head  clear,  were  behind 
her,  while  before  her  was — what?  In  the  death  of 
noise  silence  was  born.  This  silence  I  had  begun  to 
enter  on  the  way  from  Paris ;  here  at  Compiegne  it 
deepened.  I  felt  it  deepening  as  you  feel  the  change 
when  the  thermometer  is  falling.  In  the  days  that 
were  to  follow  I  waked  and  slept  and  lived  in  this 
huge  silence  that  spread  everywhere,  cloaked  the 
country  and  the  towns,  enveloped  trees  and  ruins  and 
people  and  houses  and  graves  and  trenches  and 
barbed  wire,  and  was  like  an  element.  As  fish  swim 
in  the  sea,  so  did  we  move  in  this  silence. 

11 


12  NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 

Something,  some  intimation,  had  impelled  my 
friend  and  me  to  separate  and  walk  apart.  Each  of 
us  saw  Compiegne  alone,  and  met  again  after  the  first 
experience  was  over.  We  did  not  say  much  about  it. 
All  the  large  joys,  loves,  griefs,  horrors,  amazements, 
lie  outside  the  realm  of  speech:  the  man  who  makes 
words  in  their  presence  lives  too  close  to  himself  for 
true  understanding  or  sharing.  The  hand  of  the 
Hun  had  been  laid  upon  Compiegne,  and  Compiegne 
was  withered.  Its  blight  was  not  complete.  All  its 
inhabitants  were  not  dead  or  gone  away,  all  the 
houses  were  not  gutted,  life  stirred  in  the  streets, 
goods  and  wares  were  for  sale  in  some  shop  windows, 
the  French  soldier,  bright  in  his  blue,  starred  the  pre- 
vailing darkness  of  civilian  garments : — but  then  you 
turned  some  corner  and  all  this  was  ended.  Ruin  like 
a  barrier  stopped  you.  Through  gaping  windows 
you  looked  beyond  to  more  gaping  windows,  it  was 
dangerous  to  climb  and  peer,  signs  warned  you  off, 
and  decency  bade  you  avert  your  eyes.  One  turned 
away  from  peeping  through  this  keyhole  at  naked, 
slaughtered  France. 

People  at  home  have  often  asked : 

"But  when  you  had  seen  Compiegne,  had  you  not 
seen  everything !    Is  not  one  ruin  just  like  another  f ' ' 

One  ruin  in  a  Sunday  paper  is  like  another  and  you 
look  at  it  spread  upon  your  lap.  Mile  upon  mile  of 
ruin  in  France,  travelled  over,  paused  at,  dwelt  on, 
compared,  its  particular  story  listened  to — this  has 
no  monotony,  this  fills  your  knowledge  fuller  and  ever 
more  full  each  day ;  compared  to  Sunday  papers,  it  is 
like  seeing  Niagara,  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  Grand 
Canon,  after  looking  at  a  map  of  the  United  States. 

Compiegne  was  now  behind  us,  and  to  our  right  the 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  13 

Oise,  brimful,  pouring  swiftly  along,  as  we  went  on 
the  road  to  the  town  of  Noyon.  That  was  twenty 
kilometres  ahead.  The  words  in  my  diary  of  this 
unearthly  stretch  are  few  and  almost  illegible, 
scrawled  at  the  finish,  in  Noyon. 

Very  abrupt  in  France  are  the  transitions  from 
ground  and  dwellings  untouched  by  shells  to  fields 
that  are  all  gashed  and  houses  that  are  mere  scorched 
husks.  The  houses  here  were  worse  than  the  fields. 
The  comparison  seems  desecrating,  yet  I  know  of 
none  better  than  to  say  that  every  house  along  this 
road  was  like  a  painted  house  in  a  play.  As  each 
came  into  view  you  thought,  "This  one  is  all  right." 
In  the  next  instant  the  illusion  was  blasted.  Distant 
walls  and  chimneys  of  pomp,  suggesting  grand  pianos 
and  family  portraits  within,  turned  out  as  we  passed 
them  close  to  be  stark,  roofless  shelters  of  the  void, 
hollow  squares  enclosing  charred  beams,  rank  weeds, 
and  twisted  iron.  From  haughtiest  to  humblest,  all 
were  dead. 

"Of  1914,  that  one,"  explained  our  chauffeur.  It 
had  evidently  been  a  residence  of  comfort. 

How  did  he  know  the  year  when  its  ruin  was 
wrought?     Had  he  been  there1? 

"No,  monsieur.  One  knows  easily  from  the  moss 
and  vines.  Those  have  been  growing  already  a  long 
while  without  any  disturbance. ' ' 

It  was  real  yet  unreal.  The  sense  of  the  theatre 
haunted  the  whole  of  these  twenty  unearthly  kilo- 
metres that  first  day  between  Compiegne  and  Noyon. 
Later,  as  one's  initiation  deepened  and  grew  steeped 
in  the  terrific  until  the  terrific  became  the  usual,itwas 
then  that  the  usual  itself  began  to  look  far  off  and 
unreal.     All  the  way  to  Noyon,  the  invariable  repeti- 


14  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

tion  of  ruin  failed  to  stop  appearances  from  deceiving 
me.  A  little  farm  would  come  in  sight,  its  walls 
looking  so  solid  and  the  tall  trees  about  it  so  serene, 
that  I  would  exclaim : 

"At  least  these  people  have  their  home  safe!" 

A  few  seconds  more  and  we  were  passing  another 
husk,  and  where  were  the  people  whose  home  the  husk 
had  been?  Yet  still  I  continued  to  watch  for  an 
exception  along  this  road,  all  the  way  to  Noyon. 

Here  the  silence  let  down  another  veil  between 
us  and  the  natural  world.  Rain  was  now  falling. 
Through  it  I  saw  what  was  neighboring  to  Noyon — 
barbed  wire,  trenches  under  a  hill  topped  by  a  ruined 
wood,  shell  holes,  dead  trees,  ruins  of  brick,  gas-tank 
ruins;  and  amid  all  this  various  death,  the  dingy 
green  forms  of  German  prisoners,  and  the  constant 
sound  of  explosions  in  the  fields.  The  prisoners 
were  at  work  all  round  Noyon,  setting  off  bombs  by 
wire,  and  pillars  of  smoke  rose  slowly  upward  in  the 
rain. 

"They  are  victims,  too,"  I  said  to  the  chauffeur. 

"Yes,  monsieur." 

Victims  they  were,  and  their  plight  was  bad, 
though  it  was  as  nothing  beside  the  plight  of  France, 
their  victim.  While  their  chance  lasted  they  had 
done  to  her  all  that  I  was  seeing  and  to  see,  and  they 
would  be  doing  it  still,  had  their  tide  not  turned. 

They  were  at  work  in  Noyon  as  well  as  around  it. 
Here  were  no  shops,  every  house  I  saw  was  dead, 
many  fallen  walls  piled  the  streets  high,  there  was  no 
passing,  not  even  any  walking,  save  in  the  few  cleared 
spaces.  Lumps  lay  about,  lumps  made  of  houses 
burst  and  spattered  over  their  crushed  gardens ;  roofs 
belonging  nowhere,  yet  still  almost  whole,  tilted  like 


THE   FRAGMENTS   THAT   REMAIN     15 

kites  tumbled  from  the  air.  Doorways  stood  alone, 
leading  to  vacancy.  Cellars  yawned  wide.  Into 
these  fell  the  rain  and  in  some  of  them  people  seemed 
to  be  living.  Walls  still  erect  masked  dislocated 
interiors,  and  the  placard  Verifie  was  on  several. 
This  meant  that  the  interior  had  been  visited  and  that 
nothing  there  would  fall  upon  you  or  explode,  should 
you  choose  it  for  a  lodging.  Older  placards  were 
upon  other  walls,  announcing  Cave  abri  50  personnes, 
which  meant  that  fifty  could  hide  down  in  there  when 
bombs  were  falling  upon  Noyon.  I  had  seen  beauty 
lying  dead  at  Compiegne,  arches,  pillars,  carved 
stones.  More  was  here.  The  church  was  a  shambles 
of  murdered  architecture.  Black,  cawing  birds 
sailed  and  slanted  in  and  out  of  its  windows.  Its 
tower  stood,  and  its  outer  walls,  but  within  its  dis- 
membered entrance  everything  had  been  struck  by 
the  blow  of  hate  and  toppled  in  one  mass  of  broken 
aisle  and  choir  and  crucifix  and  tomb.  Through  the 
shrivelled  dial  of  its  clock  on  the  tower  a  shell  had 
made  its  way.  They  had  done  to  it  the  worst  they 
could ;  yet  its  beauty  was  not  all  killed.  What  of  it 
was  left  stood  there,  ancient,  serene,  sanctified  by 
centuries  of  human  souls  at  prayer,  still  delivering 
to  Noyon  its  message  of  love  divine.  From  its  steps 
I  looked  across  at  the  wreck  of  a  sweet  old  house, 
beautiful  even  in  its  fragments ;  above  the  shattered 
wall  of  what  had  been  the  garden,  a  little  fruit  tree 
lifted  its  head.  Amid  the  aching  stillness,  the  crum- 
bling, the  death,  it  stood  up,  alive  and  growing.  Its 
cluster  of  pink  buds  would  be  blossoms  by  tomorrow. 
The  sight  of  it,  so  fresh,  so  young,  so  futile,  was  very 
pitiful.  A  verse  from  Exodus  came  to  me  unsought : 
"Draw  not  nigh  hither:  put  off  thy  shoes  from  off 


16  NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 

thy  feet,  for  the  place  whereon  thou  standest  is  holy 
ground. ' ' 

Between  me  and  the  little  blossoming  fruit  tree, 
three  women  veiled  and  in  black  walked  into  sight. 
They  stopped  at  the  foot  of  the  church  steps.  After 
a  short  silence,  two  of  them  went  on  slowly,  whilst  the 
third,  who  remained,  fixed  her  grave  eyes  upon  me. 

I  came  down  the  steps  with  my  hat  in  my  hand. 

''Madame,"  I  said,  "this  is  my  first  day  among  all 
this." 

"Yes,  monsieur,  one  must  get  used  to  it.  I  was 
from  Noyon.     I  live  at  Nevers  now. " 

' '  Nevers  is  a  long  way  from  Noyon,  madame. ' ' 

"Others  have  gone  farther.  I  am  here  today  to 
look  for  mv  house." 

She  turned  away  from  the  steps  of  the  church.  In 
a  little  while,  as  I  walked  back  to  where  our  car  was 
waiting,  I  saw  her  with  her  companions  in  a  street 
impassable  except  by  climbing  over  the  stones  of 
toppled  residences.  The  three  black  figures  were 
pointing  out  and  consulting  amid  a  waste  of  feature- 
less debris,  the  rain  streaming  heavily  down  upon 
them. 

Throughout  this  day  each  aspect  that  April  can 
wear  had  its  turn.  Nothing  of  the  snow  veil,  or  the 
gleam,  or  the  hazy  gentleness  of  the  forenoon  accom- 
panied our  journey  from  Noyon  to  Roye.  The  sky 
bulged  low  with  swollen,  restless  clouds.  We  passed 
the  kilometre  stones  in  a  pelting  shower  sometimes, 
and  sometimes  in  the  grey  of  a  light  that  betokened 
further  showers  along  the  kilometres  which  lay 
ahead.  For  a  while  our  way  was  accompanied  by  the 
noise  of  explosions  and  their  smoke.  Stooping 
women  were  in  the  fields,  their  faces  down,  their  arms 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  17 

moving  at  some  work.  I  thought  they  were  sowing 
seed,  but  the  chauffeur  told  us  that  it  was  the  shell 
holes  they  were  filling.  These  spotted  the  earth  far 
and  near,  and  seemed  thick  to  us  on  this  first  sight 
of  them;  before  the  land  could  be  fitly  farmed  they 
had  to  be  filled  by  those  stooping  women. 

Somewhere  along  this  road  we  saw  for  the  first 
time  a  war  railway,  a  light  narrow-gauge  affair, 
vacant  and  idle  now,  laid  in  haste  upon  no  secure 
ballast.  Over  its  unsettled  bed  it  tilted  and  curved 
through  this  bit  of  country,  its  disused  rails  reddened 
with  rust.  A  year  ago  it  had  been  full  of  business, 
plying  the  Huns  with  means  to  deal  this  silence  to 
the  slain  earth.  No  trains  were  here  now,  and 
nothing  to  load  them  with,  had  they  been  here.  The 
poplars  bordering  our  road  had  been  felled,  we  ran 
along  between  their  severed  stumps,  and  here  for  the 
first  time  we  saw  in  some  of  the  farms  the  murdered 
fruit  trees.  There  would  be  the  house,  shattered, 
and  the  out-buildings,  shattered,  sunk  in  various 
angles  of  wreck,  and  beyond  these  the  symmetrically 
amputated  orchard,  dead,  on  its  knees,  so  to  speak,  as 
if  it  had  prayed  its  destroyers  to  spare  the  other 
orchards'  lives.  Since  this  land  was  not  to  be  the 
invader's  booty,  as  much  of  it  as  could  be  killed 
should  die. 

Upon  the  walls  and  doors  of  Noyon  we  had  read 
the  placards  announcing  shelter  from  bombs.  These 
were  French,  in  the  language  of  the  victims.  The 
language  of  the  invaders  met  us  at  some  cross-roads 
half-way  to  Roye.  The  single  word  zur  was  on  a  sign- 
post, the  rest  broken  off.     Zur :  To .     The  name 

of  the  place  was  splintered  away,  and  the  place  itself 
was  no  more  to  be  seen.     Shell  holes  and  dead  trees 


18  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

lay  between  us  and  its  stones.  We  might  turn  right 
or  left — shell  holes  and  dead  trees  and  the  stones  of 
little  places  would  be  all  that  there  was  to  see.  Zur. 
Three  letters  of  the  alphabet  put  together.  The 
wrecks  of  homes  and  fields  were  the  Huns '  work,  but 
this  was  their  speech.  They  had  intended  that 
German  should  be  spoken  here  in  the  future. 

We  read  the  next  Hun  words  on  a  head-board  over 
a  grave  at  the  edge  of  Roye : 

"Hier  ruht  in  Gott  Fahrer  Ph.  Rihr  Mag.  F.  Kel. 
188  Gef alien  beim  Vormarsch  30  Marz,  1918.' * 

"Here  rests  in  God"  .  .  . 

In  what  God,  in  whose  God,  was  he  reposing? 

No  man  can  say.  It  was  neither  he,  nor  such  as 
he,  upon  whose  soul  lay  the  guilt  of  all  this.  From 
his  cradle  he  had  been  schooled  for  it  by  those  who 
had  drilled  him,  mind  and  spirit.  The  guilt  was 
theirs.  This  soldier,  had  he  lived  to  see  the  Father- 
land again,  would  have  been  with  millions  of  other 
Germans  an  uncertain  quantity  for  the  rest  of  us. 
Would  disaster  have  cured  him,  or  would  it  have 
merely  made  him  wish  to  bide  his  time  and  come 
again?  He  was  a  victim,  too,  like  the  living  ones  I 
had  seen  as  prisoners  at  Compiegne.  His  dust  was 
more  tragic  than  that  of  the  dead  French  or  English 
that  slept  in  the  battlefields  of  Picardy  and  Flanders. 
Their  countries  rose  to  sacrifice,  his  country  fell. 
That  is  why  Germany's  tragedy,  from  the  time  I  saw 
it  clear  in  the  first  months  of  the  war,  has  seemed  to 
me  always  the  greatest  tragedy  of  all. 

Just  thirteen  months  ago  this  soldier  had  fallen  at 
an  hour  when  it  seemed  as  if  he  and  his  hordes  were 
at  last  to  overrun  and  rule  these  shell-shocked  fields. 
In  that  case  our  turn  was  to  come,  our  homes  and 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  19 

PI  i 

orchards  were  to  look  like  this.  We  did  not  know  it 
then,  we  went  to  war  not  to  defend  them  but  to  save 
a  cause.  We  later  learned  that  "  Paris  in  three 
weeks,  London  in  three  months,  New  York  in  three 
years,' '  had  been  the  plan  in  full. 

The  very  ground  to  which  our  road  was  leading  us 
today  was  sacred  to  the  memory  of  our  dead  also,  had 
seen  the  stain  of  our  long  neutrality  wiped  away  with 
the  grit  of  our  onset,  the  blood  of  our  dead,  the  tears 
of  our  bereft.  Montdidier  was  ahead,  where  our  1st 
Division  had  been  rushed  this  week  a  year  ago,  and 
one  month  later  it  had  taken  Cantigny  with  a  swift 
and  splendid  sweep. 

Through  Roye  our  road  twisted  like  an  S,  by  an 
extinct  church  on  the  left  and  on  the  right  a  half  ruin, 
wherein  butchers  were  at  work  and  whereon  was 
advertised  horse  meat  of  the  first  quality.  Half 
ruins  and  whole  ruins  surrounded  a  square,  the  Place 
d'Armes,  and  over  what  was  left  of  the  door  of  a 
more  important  ruin  on  this  square  was  the  sign  of 
the  Hun :  Stadt  Kommandant.  Along  the  seventeen 
kilometres  to  Montdidier  the  ravages  of  war  contin- 
ued unchanged,  and  war's  other  leavings  increased 
and  thickened.  So  far,  trenches  and  excavations  had 
not  been  close  to  the  road  we  had  come.  Line  upon 
line  of  them  now  furrowed  the  face  of  the  land  like 
huge  sentences  scrawled  across  a  huge  page  in  some 
ancient  alphabet.  Dug-outs  lined  the  road,  cellared 
the  higher  banks  in  rows,  like  the  suburban  opera- 
tions of  contractors.  Immense  piles  of  obus  never 
fired,  still  alive,  littered  the  bare  and  muddy  fields. 
From  an  aeroplane  one  could  have  looked  down  upon 
these  slabs  and  blocks  of  unexploded  shells  as  if  they 
were  the  fragments  of  some  dislocated  town.    A  grey 


20  NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 

lattice-work  of  camouflage  three  metres  high  still 
shielded  the  road,  its  material  torn  and  hanging  in 
strips,  but  nrach  of  it  as  it  had  been  in  the  days  when 
it  concealed  the  passing  troops  and  trains  of  muni- 
tions and  provisions.  Squads  of  men  were  at  work 
removing  and  effacing  all  this.  Camions  lurched  by, 
or  stood  in  the  mud.  Winter  had  but  lately  left  this 
region  and  the  labor  seemed  but  just  to  have  begun ; 
for  all  the  change  it  had  made  as  yet  to  the  eye,  war 
and  the  Huns  might  have  gone  away  last  week.  No 
house  seemed  whole  at  Montdidier.  Between  the 
houses  and  everywhere  around  them  the  ground 
looked  like  a  paste  of  mud  irredeemable.  You  have 
seen  places  where  floods  have  swept  all  shapes  to  a 
general  shapelessness.  The  valley  here  was  some- 
thing like  that.  In  the  mud  labored  the  squads  of 
men.  small  objects  in  the  large  obliteration. 

We  did  not  take  the  road  through  Cantigny,  but 
that  on  the  west  bank  of  the  river,  along  a  ridge,  to 
which  we  mounted  as  we  left  Montdidier.  From  this 
high  ground  I  was  able  presently  to  look  across  the 
lower  territory  over  which  our  1st  Division  had  made 
its  attack.  Straw  still  covered  the  wet  floors  of  the 
dug-outs,  their  steps  were  slippery,  telephone  wires 
stretched  and  dangled  between  them,  they  were  still 
concealed  by  the  disguising  bushes  and  the  burlap 
lattice-work  of  camouflage.  The  footprints  of  war 
seemed  very  fresh.  You  could  have  picked  up  from 
the  floors  and  shelves  of  the  dug-outs  more  tokens 
than  vou  could  have  carried  awav. 

Quite  different  from  Compiegne  or  Noyon  or  Rove 
was  the  aspect  of  Moreuil;  quite  different,  too,  from 
the  smaller  clusters  of  dwellings,  the  petit  pays,  the 
assembled  group  of  the  French  farm.     Those  had 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  21 

been  generally  grey,  built  of  brittle  stone,  and  when 
their  wall?  were  struck  they  crumbled  partly  or  en- 
tirely, and  their  ancient  beauty  vanished  never  to 
be  made  again.  Moreuil  was  of  brick  and  did  not 
fall  when  shells  bored  through  it.  Its  gutted  walls 
enclosed  nothing,  they  stood  up  like  masks,  or  a  bad 
dream.  They  were  of  today,  their  like  could  easily 
be  built  again.  We  looked  down  upon  them  from  the 
road  along  the  ridge,  with  the  sun  shining  upon  their 
spread  of  ruin,  out  of  which  stuck  high  into  the  air 
one  chimney  that  the  shells  had  missed.  Beside  the 
road  a  family  had  built  a  hovel  of  tar  paper  and 
slats,  and  in  the  mud  the  children  were  laying  a 
brick  porch  in  front  of  its  door.  Five  thousand 
people  had  lived  in  Moreuil,  five  hundred  were  able 
to  live  there  today ;  in  what  and  on  what  I  did  not  see. 
Soon  after  this  the  signs  of  war  began  to  dwindle 
away  as  we  went  along  the  valley;  houses  that  were 
whole  increased  in  number;  the  town  of  Boves  was 
much  less  damaged  than  any  in  the  fifty  miles  since 
Compiegne.  In  Amiens,  at  a  hotel  I  had  known  for 
a  long  while,  ended  this  day. 


IV 


LIFE     FLICKERING 


Gaunt  renovations,  raw  partitions  of  wood,  newly 
set  up  and  still  awaiting  paint,  met  my  sight.  They 
gave  to  this  place,  so  familiar  and  once  so  upholstered 
and  cheerful,  where  I  had  eaten  and  slept  in  other 
days,  the  appearance  of  a  friend  whom  one  is  allowed 
to  see  for  the  first  time  after  a  wasting  and  perilous 
illness. 

"Yes,"  said  the  landlord,  "we  were  bombed,  as 
you  see.    We  began  again  in  January." 

"But  the  cathedral?" 

"We  have  it,  we  shall  have  it.  Only  hit  seven 
times.    You  will  see." 

"And  the  stork?"  I  now  asked  him. 

"Ah,  you  have  been  here  before,  then?" 

"Many  times.  And  the  last  time,  in  July  1914,  I 
watched  from  my  bedroom  window  the  stork  walking 
with  a  seagull  in  his  domain  beneath;  and  I  went 
down  into  that  domain  of  lawn  and  garden  which  the 
wings  of  the  hotel  enclosed.  But  the  stork  turned 
away  from  my  advances." 

"He  is  dead,"  said  the  landlord.  "When  the 
bombs  came,  an  English  officer  quartered  here  was 
going  on  leave,  and  he  offered  to  take  him  to  a  place 
of  safety.    The  stork  went  to  London,  where  he  died. ' ' 

The  hotel  was  chill  as  a  cave,  few  guests  seemed  to 
be  lodging  in  it,  and  but  a  few  of  these  were  civilians. 
Of  travellers  such  as  we  there  seemed  to  be  none 
except  ourselves.     The  mere   sight-seer  was   still 

22 


LIFE   FLICKERING  23 

debarred.  He  would  swarm  later,  when  roads  and 
roofs  and  meals  and  all  facilities  were  more  ready 
and  less  scant  than  they  were  today. 

Daylight  still  lingered,  the  dinner  hour  was  not 
imminent,  so  I  walked  out  of  the  cold  hotel  into  the 
cold,  damp  streets  and  turned  my  steps  to  the  cathe- 
dral. This  town,  larger  than  Compiegne,  was  like 
Compiegne  and  like  no  other  through  which  our 
road  had  lain  during  this  day  of  desolation,  until  our 
fleeting  sight  of  Boves.  As  I  went  along  the  streets, 
a  curious  sensation  of  reassurance  increased  within 
me,  and  I  grew  aware  that  this  had  begun  in  Boves. 
There  I  had  noticed  the  first  houses  which  looked 
like  usual  houses,  with  roofs  and  doors  and  windows 
with  people  looking  out  of  them,  and  I  had  seen 
people  walking  about  or  crossing  the  street,  like  usual 
people.  Here  was  more  of  it.  Shop  windows  had 
usual  things  for  sale  in  them,  cheeses  and  books  and 
hats;  people  stood  in  the  shop  doors,  women  put 
parcels  into  baskets,  men  bought  newspapers  and 
struck  matches  to  light  cigarettes;  I  saw  children, 
dogs,  and  a  cat  recumbent,  sleek,  licking  her  fur  as 
if  there  had  never  been  a  bomb  in  the  world.  As  a 
man  who  has  been  deep  in  a  dreadful  dream  where 
nothing  happens  but  the  monstrous,  faintly  begins  to 
feel  that  it  is  not  true,  and  then  suddenly  knows  that 
he  is  in  his  bed  and  safe,  so  I  walked  in  Amiens,  re- 
leased from  the  haunting  day  by  these  natural  sights. 
The  real  world  still  existed.  The  haunting  day 
seemed  not  of  this  time,  but  something  long  ago: 
those  cities  of  dug-outs  and  tilted  zigzag  trenches, 
those  slabs  of  piled  ammunition,  those  toppled  clumps 
of  masonry,  those  stooping  women  over  the  shell 
holes,  might  all  have  been  a  piece  of  legend,  woven 


24  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

in  some  great  stiff  faded  fabric  hanging  in  some 
castle  where  cold  airs  blow  from  turrets  and  cor- 
ridors unseen. 

"We  began  again  in  January." 

The  Hotel  du  Rhin  had  been  bombed,  its  landlord's 
business  had  been  smashed  and  shattered,  emptied 
of  all  profit,  guestless,  even  the  pet  bird  obliterated; 
but  one  year  ago  the  destroyer  had  been  shaking  these 
gates ;  and  here  were  we  guests,  fed,  bedded,  paying 
bills.  I  rejected  the  sombre  prophecy  of  a  great 
Belgian  lady,  made  to  one  of  our  soldiers:  "There 
will  be  no  recovery."  These  French  would  recover. 
There  was  that  cat,  licking  her  comfortable  fur.  She, 
too,  was  a  mute  parable.  France  was  not  dead,  was 
not  going  to  die.  Even  amid  the  spread  of  the  war- 
desert  were  areas  of  life.  Between  Maubeuge  and 
Landrecies  it  was  said  that  the  Hun  had  not  ravaged. 
Other  spots  than  this  had  been  left  alive,  and  the 
dead  places  would  be  raised  from  the  dead.  Smoke 
would  come  again  some  day  out  of  that  lone  chimney 
at  Moreuil.  Smoke  would  come  again  from  the  dead 
chimneys  of  Lille.  Machinery  would  clank  again  in 
the  dead  factories  and  drowned  mines.  Wheat  and 
fruit  would  ripen  again  where  I  had  seen  the  shell 
holes.  Later  eyes  than  mine  would  never  see  those 
stooping  women.  Later  eyes  than  mine  would  see 
the  farmer  back  upon  his  farm,  the  exile  restored  to 
his  dwelling ;  travellers  coming  after  me  might  stand 
on  the  steps  of  Noyon  church  and  hear  singing  within. 
I  verily  believe  that  nothing  I  saw  in  Amiens  streets 
on  my  way  to  the  cathedral  this  evening  gave  me 
more  of  reassurance  and  more  brought  me  back 
out  of  the  world  where  I  had  been  into  a  possible 
world  than  that  quiet  cat,  licking  her  fur ! 


V 


AN   INN   OF  THE  SOUL 


I  went  along  the  street  of  the  cat  and  the  people 
and  the  little  shops  where  little  purchases  were  being 
made,  bidding  a  new  welcome  to  each  new  humble 
sign  that  I  saw  of  home  life  being  lived.  The  very 
humblest  were  the  very  best.  I  can  remember  stop- 
ping to  watch  a  stream  of  soapy  water  flowing  from 
some  outlet ;  I  had  never  thought  to  feel  thankful  for 
such  a  sight.  Little  in  the  world  is  more  awful 
than  the  first  visit  to  familiar  places  after  some 
eternal  change  has  passed  over  them,  or  over  oneself. 
I  went  on  and  reached  a  street  so  well  remembered, 
that  for  a  moment  time  shut  flat,  and  all  my  bygone 
sauntering  here  became  present ;  it  was  unbelievable 
that  round  the  corner  I  should  not  meet  those  who 
had  walked  there  with  me  once.  Then  I  turned  the 
corner  and  with  this  step  was  in  the  silence  again. 
My  own  personal  memories  vanished  as  they  had 
come,  like  ghosts.  My  own  silences  were  swallowed 
in  this  great  silence  of  France.  I  had  thought  it 
distant  for  a  while,  out  there,  out  beyond  Boves,  out 
among  the  barbed  wire  and  the  holes  and  the  stooping 
women.  It  was  here.  It  filled  like  a  presence  the 
narrower  street  I  had  entered.  Sills  and  doors  were 
heavy  with  it.  It  set  its  weight  upon  the  very  paving- 
stones.  The  small  bustle  of  life  behind  me  was  merely 
a  hole  in  its  vastness.  I  cannot  remember  what  ruin 
I  passed  in  this  street,  what  roofs  or  walls  were 

25 


26  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

bomb-broken,  perhaps  there  were  none ;  I  remember 
the  silence  alone,  its  sweeping  return  upon  me,  the 
hush  in  which  it  steeped  my  thoughts. 

Were  the  life  and  motion  in  the  other  street  nothing 
but  a  raft  from  a  great  wreck,  floating  upon  this 
waste,  never  to  reach  shore,  in  a  little  while  to  be 
engulfed?  Did  those  people  sell  and  buy  their  small 
wares  and  cook  their  suppers  merely  as  men  with 
sudden,  mortal  wounds  sometimes  go  onward  for  a 
while,  unaware  that  they  have  been  severed  from 
existence  ? 

The  landlord 's  word  came  back  to  me. 

What  had  they  begun  again  in  January?  The  first 
steps  of  a  long  climb  back  to  health,  or  the  last  lap 
before  the  null  and  the  void?  Was  our  whole  era 
mortally  wounded?  Had  we  all  been  severed  from 
existence,  were  we  all  on  the  last  lap?  Other  days 
and  civilizations  that  were  over  long  ago  came  into 
my  head ;  great,  crumbled,  prone  cities,  whose  names 
conjure  up  the  mounded  desert,  and  pillars  lying 
about,  and  wide  stone  stairways  with  lions  prowling 
upon  them.  Were  the  yellow  sands  of  Asia  presently 
to  have  their  turn  and  to  sweep  over  and  bury  us  all? 

I  looked  up;  I  had  come  in  my  slow  walk  to  the 
cathedral. 

If  thoughts  can  stop,  the  sight  of  it  stopped  mine. 
So  does  a  shutter  thrown  open  in  the  morning  pour 
the  room  full  of  light.  There  is  music,  very  little, 
which  to  hear  makes  one  feel  that  it  happened  of  it- 
self, that  it  came  out  of  space  like  a  wind.  There  are 
lines  of  poetry,  very  few,  that  do  not  seem  to  have 
been  written,  unless  by  the  elements.  No  poetry  that 
I  have  read,  no  music  that  I  have  heard,  so  lift  one 
up  into  that  region  of  marvelling  which  lies  beyond 


AN   INN   OF   THE   SOUL  27 

the  powers  of  speech,  as  does  this  church  of  Amiens. 
Its  two  great  sisters  of  Reims  and  Chartres  do  this 
also:  no  others  in  the  world:  no  buildings  made  by 
man  at  any  time  in  Italy  or  Greece  or  anywhere  so 
strike  self  to  nothing  and  leave  only  wordless  won- 
der, wordless  awe,  motionless  delight.  Out  of  East- 
ern sands  rise  monuments  as  august,  but  they  are  un- 
friendly. The  only  sights  surpassing  the  befriending 
glory  of  these  churches  are  of  the  water  and  of  the 
earth  and  the  air,  and  what  nature  does  at  morning 
and  evening.  To  be  able  to  look  at  them  unmoved 
must  be  to  have  no  soul  at  all.  They  are  endless  like 
nature;  one  does  not  tire  of  them,  and  to  return  to 
them  is  to  find  them  greater  than  one's  memory. 

My  thoughts  began  again,  whilst  that  miracle  in 
stone  shone  down  upon  me  and  into  me.  How  had 
men  made  it?  It  looked  as  if  beings  from  another 
place  had  come  through  the  sky,  bearing  it  among 
them,  and  had  set  it  down  here  and  gone  away.  It 
was  greater  than  the  silence.  It  rose  symmetric  into 
a  realm  of  august  tranquillity  far  above  the  voiceless, 
shapeless  hell  which  I  had  begun  to  enter  at  Com- 
piegne.     Then  I  heard  myself  saying  aloud: 

".  .  .  .  magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas  and  fairy  lands  forlorn." 

I  looked  about  the  square,  the  place  was  empty, 
I  had  it  to  myself.  Forlorn?  Yes,  forlorn  indeed, 
but  not  fairy  lands.  Noyon  and  Roye  and  Mont- 
didier  and  Moreuil  were  not  fairy  lands.  I  thought 
again  of  those  in  whose  company  I  had  gazed  at  these 
magic  casements  in  other  years.  I  was  glad  that  they 
were  gone,  glad  that  none  of  them  had  lived  to  know 
what  men  can  do  to  this  earth:  villages  dead  and 


28  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

those  who  had  lived  in  them,  fields  extinct  and  those 
who  had  plowed  in  them,  churches  in  dust  and  those 
who  had  prayed  in  them,  tombs  burst  open  and  the 
bones  that  slept  in  them,  toys  in  ashes  and  those  who 
had  played  with  them.  These  casements  had  opened 
on  the  foam  of  many  mortal  lives,  on  seven  hundred 
years  of  men.  They  were  two  centuries  old  when 
Columbus  was  born.  Men  and  women  in  how  many 
fashions  of  dress  had  knelt  beneath  the  vast  arches 
within,  while  the  stained  light  streamed  down  upon 
their  heads.  In  how  many  languages  had  "Our 
Father  who  art  in  Heaven"  been  whispered  here? 

The  words  of  one  of  those  companions  who  once 
had  stood  at  this  corner  with  me,  looking  up  as  I  was 
looking  now,  came  back  to  me: 

"You  are  so  beautiful  with  the  promise  and  the 
consolation  which  you  speak  without  words,"  she 
had  said,  addressing  the  great  church,  "that  you  set 
one  praying  before  one  enters  you.  Surely,  just  to 
see  you  would  open  in  every  one  the  vault  where  his 
childhood's  prayers  had  been  shut,  no  matter  how 
long  it  had  been  locked ! ' '  She  walked  away  from  me 
and  went  into  the  church. 

No  vault  was  unlocked  in  me  while  I  stood  re- 
membering this,  yet  none  the  less  was  I  drawn  by 
memory  and  by  the  power  of  the  great  church.  I 
wished  to  go  inside  by  that  door  where  my  friend 
had  entered,  and  sit  down  for  a  while  and  think 
quietly  of  her,  and  of  those  others  for  whose  death 
I  was  glad,  because  they  had  not  known  what  man 
can  do  to  this  earth. 

A  soldier  came  out  of  the  door  and  behind  him  a 
verger,  who  locked  it  and  departed.  The  church  was 
shut  till  morning. 


AN   INN   OF   THE   SOUL  29 

Dusk  was  advancing  but  light  was  by  no  means 
yet  gone,  it  would  be  slow  in  going.  I  did  not  wish  to 
leave  until  I  must ;  I  moved  beneath  the  spell.  The 
power  of  the  church  seemed  something  which  not  the 
spirit  alone  but  even  the  body  could  feel.  I  stepped 
slowly  back  from  it  to  see  as  much  of  its  majestic 
length  and  height  as  I  could.  Then  I  grew  aware  of 
the  first  figure  that  had  come  out  of  the  door.  I  had 
hardly  noticed  him  while  the  official  was  locking  it. 
I  had  seen  that  he  was  a  soldier  with  a  broad  hat  and 
had  thought  no  more  about  him.  He  was  an  Amer- 
ican, an  officer.  Something  more  than  his  uniform 
betokened  his  race,  something  apart  from  whatever 
features  he  might  have,  something  young,  ages  and 
generations  younger  than  the  official  who  had  locked 
the  door.  He  was  still  standing  near  it,  with  his 
back  to  me.  He  was  too  close  to  the  church  to  be  able 
to  see  anything  of  it,  except  the  door  and  the  tem- 
porary scaffolding  surrounding  it.  He  stood  motion- 
less, graceful,  intent,  and  I  wondered  what  it  was 
that  he  found  to  absorb  him  so  deeply. 

A  young  soldier  from  America,  standing  in  antique 
Picardy,  staring  curiously  at  the  cathedral  of 
Amiens :  the  latest  war-clad  figure  in  the  pageant  of 
wars  which  had  wet  every  one  of  that  cathedral's 
seven  centuries  with  blood:  behind  these  seven,  ere 
ever  its  first  stone  had  been  laid,  other  centuries  wet 
with  blood,  back  to  the  bringing  of  Christianity  to 
this  antique  Picardy,  sixteen  hundred  years  ago :  and 
then  still  back  until  the  records  die  away  and  the 
pageant  of  wars  fades  into  the  years  unrecorded  and 
unknown.  Koman  blood,  Norman  blood,  English 
blood,  Spanish  blood,  French  blood,  had  drenched  this 
soil;  and  now,  as  if  the  veins  of  the  Old  World  had 


30  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

been  opened  too  often  and  too  long,  and  were  run- 
ning dry,  time  had  tapped  fresh  reservoirs,  and  had 
drawn  the  blood  of  the  New  "World  to  drench  this 
ancient  soil. 

The  young  soldier  stood  so  still  that,  had  he  not 
raised  his  hand  once  and  passed  it  over  his  forehead, 
he  might  have  been  inanimate ;  his  form  had  the  quiet- 
ness of  the  cathedral  itself.  Did  this  American  close 
to  that  Gothic  portal  which  had  been  a  portal  long 
before  Columbus  was  born  know  on  what  ground  he 
was  standing?  Had  he  ever  learned  the  name  by 
which  Amiens  town  was  known  to  Julius  Caesar  when 
he  made  it  the  centre  of  his  wars  against  the  Bel- 
gians? Was  he  of  the  sort  that  cares  about  such 
things  ?  Roman  emperors  had  dwelt  here,  and  after 
them  Peter  the  Hermit ;  Geoffrey  Chaucer  may  have 
passed  this  way  on  his  errands  for  his  Plantagenet 
king.  This  great  church  yas  begun  before  St. 
Louis,  King  of  France,  went  on  his  first  Crusade. 
Did  this  latest  crusader,  this  soldier  from  the  New 
World,  who  had  left  his  own  land  and  crossed  three 
thousand  miles  of  sea  to  save  Christian  shrines  and 
homes  from  pagan  desecration,  know  any  of  this? 
Six  hundred  years  ago,  the  invaders  whose  weapons 
had  been  cloth  yard  shafts  had  come  here.  Again 
and  again  Amiens  had  been  wrenched  by  one  violent 
hand  from  another.  The  ancient  glass  of  these  magic 
casements  had  been  shattered  in  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. They  had  looked  down  upon  the  Prussians, 
entering  victorious  from  Villers-Bretonneux  in  No- 
vember 1870.  They  had  seen  the  Prussians  again  in 
August  1914.  One  year  ago  Prussia  was  reaching 
very  close  to  wrench  off  Amiens  from  France.  But 
France  had  it  safe  and  America  had  helped  France. 


AN   INN    OF    THE    SOUL  31 

Was  the  boy  thinking  of  this,  was  he  saying  some 
sort  of  prayer  as  he  stood  facing  this  house  of  God! 
I  should  never  have  known,  for  I  would  never  have 
trespassed  upon  the  mood  that  held  him  so  still ;  but 
he  moved  abruptly,  wheeled  from  the  door,  and  began 
to  walk  away.  In  a  few  steps  he  stumbled  and  I  saw 
from  his  manner  of  walking  that  it  was  difficult  for 
him  and  cost  him  pain. 

I  approached  him  and  asked,  had  he  ever  seen  this 
before? 

"No,"  he  answered  without  turning  his  head. 

"Don't  you  find  it  very  beautiful?"  I  inquired. 

"I  suppose  I  do."  His  voice  was  low,  and  gruff 
and  defiant. 

"I  care  for  it  more  every  time  I  come  back  to  it," 
I  said.  "Just  for  its  sake  alone,  I  almost  think  I 
would  cross  the  ocean." 

"You  American?"  Still  he  looked  away  from  me 
as  I  answered. 

He  remained  silent ;  only  his  intention  changed.  It 
had  been  plain  before  this  that  he  wished  to  go  his 
way,  and  without  my  company;  but  now  he  walked 
with  me. 

"I  am  going  round  to  see  the  west  front,"  I  ex- 
plained. 

He  went  along  by  my  side,  stumbling  a  second 
time. 

We  walked  very  slowly,  and,  as  he  did  not  say  a 
word,  I  spoke  of  the  famous  carving.  I  mentioned 
some  of  the  groups  which  I  remembered;  Kings  of 
France,  a  figure  of  Christ,  the  apostles,  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead.  Then  we  came  to  the  west  front 
and  there  was  no  carving  to  see ;  piles  of  sand  bags 
wholly  concealed  the  glorious  company  of  figures  to 


32  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

keep  these  master-works  of  a  lost  art  from  the  bombs 
of  the  Huns. 

"They're  piled  like  that  inside,  too,"  said  my 
companion.  "Where  the  choir  is.  The  man  said 
the  choir  was  a  great  thing." 

"It's  a  great  thing,  indeed,"  I  said.  "Nothing 
like  it  could  happen  today.  Today  nothing  like  any 
of  this  could  happen — and  it  happened  only  in  France. 
You  will  find  nothing  in  England  to  stand  with  it,  and 
Germany  made  a  gigantic  failure  at  Cologne."  I 
could  not  be  sure  that  he  heard  me,  nor  yet  could  I 
stop.  "Men  are  still  trying  to  do  what  these  old 
builders  did.  They  fail.  They  measure  and  study 
and  copy  exactly,  and  they  fail.  They  have  tried  to 
reproduce  the  Day  of  Judgment  group  that  is  be- 
hind those  sand  bags.  They  have  built  perfectly 
correct  Gothic  churches  in  many  modern  towns  and 
every  one  of  them  is  as  cold  and  dead  as  a  door- 
nail." 

The  soldier  was  looking  up  at  the  towers.  Now 
and  then  he  nodded  as  I  continued  my  comments  and 
my  facts.  He  was  a  captain  and  his  age  I  could  not 
guess ;  different  ages  seemed  to  meet  in  him.  He  was 
tall,  full  six  feet,  his  hands  shapely  and  of  powerful 
mould,  the  nails  large  and  smooth.  The  lines  of  his 
body  were  boyish;  the  lines  of  nineteen,  twenty, 
perhaps,  a  year  or  two  more  at  the  most ;  and  his  face 
was  boyish  in  shape;  but  in  his  voice  a  seasoned 
maturity  sounded;  boyhood  does  not  speak  in  such 
tones.  The  scant  words  he  had  thus  far  vouchsafed 
me  were  serried  in  their  utterance,  and  matched  by  a 
silence  equally  compact.  Yet  he  was  not  being  rude. 
His  manner  conveyed  some  sort  of  wish  for  compan- 
ionship.   Something  was  going  on  beneath  his  taci- 


AN   INN    OF    THE    SOUL  33 

turnity.  He  was  holding  himself  in.  I  remembered 
his  stumbling,  and  thought  that  he  had  better  sit  down 
on  the  steps,  but  I  hung  back  from  making  the 
suggestion. 

He  turned  from  the  towers,  and,  for  the  first  time, 
looked  full  at  me.  His  eyes  burned  with  a  sullen  fire. 
In  his  face  I  saw,  too,  what  I  had  seen  in  the  general 
English  and  P^rench  faces,  and  as  yet  in  no  face  that 
was  American :  this  boy,  also,  had  seen  that  which  had 
let  him  into  a  knowledge  he  would  not  get  over, 
though  he  might  grow  used  to  it :  young  his  flesh  was, 
young  his  spirit  would  never  be  again. 

"That  is  as  dead  as  a  door-nail  too." 

This  declaration  he  accompanied  with  a  flinging 
gesture  of  his  arm  at  the  cathedral. 

I  looked  at  him,  what  he  meant  not  yet  quite  dawn- 
ing upon  me. 

"As  for  your  Day  of  Judgment" — he  snapped  his 
fingers  at  the  piled  sand  bags — "that  will  never 
happen  at  all.  Never.  Because  only  one  person 
would  be  judged  that  day.  I  'm  not  afraid  of  any  Day 
of  Judgment.  Are  you?  Nobody  need  be  afraid, 
except  God  for  making  a  world  like  this.  So  He  '11  be 
careful  not  to  let  it  happen." 

Again  he  looked  at  the  cathedral.  His  voice  was 
changelessly  quiet  with  something  in  it  implacable. 

"Dead  as  a  door-nail,"  he  repeated.  "Just  as 
dead  as  any  temple  to  Jupiter  in  ancient  Rome. ' ' 

"What?  When  people  have  been  getting  strength 
and  comfort  from  it  since  the  thirteenth  century?" 

"What  did  these  people  know?: 


'Do  you  remember  who  some  of  them  were,  and 
t  they  did?" 


what  they  did?" 

I  don't  care  who  they  were  or  what  they  did." 


34  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"  England,  France,  Europe,  America,  you  and  I, 
everything  we  see,  are  partly  the  result  of  their 
doings  and  their  thoughts." 

' '  Sure  they  were  grown  up  as  to  all  that.  Children 
about  religion,  though.  Swallowed  the  whole  thing. 
Got  blessed  in  there  by  some  guy  with  candles  and 
millinery  and  then  came  out  and  behaved  worse  than 
I  ever  would.  And  I'm  no  saint."  He  paused  a 
moment,  and  took  it  up  anew.  "Why  one  of  those 
kings  that  they  say  built  up  this  French  nation  used 
to  pray  to  leaden  images  in  his  hat. ' ' 

"People  need  images  still.  Some  always  will. 
"Where 's  the  harm  ?    It 's  what 's  back  of  the  image. ' ' 

He  did  not  seem  to  have  heard  me.  ' '  I  swallowed 
it  all  too,  once.  Never  again.  What's  back  of  the 
image  ?     Nothing. ' ' 

Young  people  find  much  pleasure  in  assuring  them- 
selves that  they  are  infidels,  and  still  more  pleasure 
in  assuring  other  people  of  this.  The  case  before  me 
was  not  of  that  kind.  No  callow  intellectual  snobbism 
was  prompting  this  young  soldier  to  show  off  for 
my  benefit.  Showing  off  there  was  none.  True  war 
was  raging  in  his  soul.  Not  from  spiritual  shallow- 
ness, but  from  spiritual  depth,  did  his  eyes  burn  and 
his  voice  quietly  ring  with  bitterness.  Each  sentence 
was  evenly  spoken  and  every  word  fell  like  a  blow 
dealt  by  implacable  disillusion.  I  think  that  he  had 
never  said  any  of  it  before ;  that  he  might  never  have 
said  any  of  it  at  all,  but  for  my  crossing  his  path,  and 
his  learning  that  I  was  a  fellow-countryman  at  a 
moment  when  the  mighty  power  of  the  cathedral  had 
collided  with  whatever  mighty  anguish  was  within 
him.  I  think,  too,  that  he  would  have  said  it  to  no 
one  but  an  entire  stranger. 


AN   INN   OF    THE    SOUL  35 

Having  begun,  he  did  not  stop.  "If  a  man  started 
sinning  the  first  day  he  was  old  enough  to  be  able  to 
sin,  and  kept  on  every  day  of  every  year  of  his  life 
till  he  died,  would  he  deserve  eternal  damnation  V ' 
This  question  he  answered  for  himself.  "Not  even 
the  Kaiser  deserves  hell-without-end.  The  one  who 
ought  to  be  punished — if  there  was  any  such  thing  as 
'ought'  in  this  game — is  the  one  who  made  a  world 
with  love  and  death  m  it;  the  one  who  could  have 
made  a  world  where  good  health  was  contagious 
instead  of  disease,  and  didn  't  do  it.  I  don 't  think  I 'd 
look  down  on  millions  in  suffering  and  tell  them  I'd 
make  it  up  to  them  some  other  time  in  some  other 
place.  I'd  get  to  work  making  it  up  to  them  sooner 
than  that — that  is,  if  I  was  the  kind  of  God  they  claim 
He  is.  It's  much  easier  for  me  to  believe  a  devil  made 
this  world — let  you  catch  a  sight  of  joy  just  to  make 
you  know  all  the  better  what  pain  is.  Of  course  I 
don 't  believe  that  either. ' ' 

1 '  Then  the  world  made  itself  1 "  I  asked. 

"Oh,  I've  been  round  and  round  all  that.  You 
can 't  think  about  it.  You  can 't  think  about  space,  or 
the  stars,  or  how  anything  began.  If  you  try  to  pour 
infinity  into  a  finite  brain,  smash  goes  your  brain. 
But  I  have  a  reasoning  power  and  I'm  not  going  to 
believe  a  thing  my  reasoning  power  denies. ' ' 

I  quoted  to  him  from  a  great  Frenchman:  "The 
heart  has  reasons  which  reason  does  not  under- 
stand. ' ' 

He  was  dogged.  "If  the  sweet-by-and-bye  busi- 
ness is  good  enough  for  you,  it's  not  for  me." 

Of  his  own  move  he  now  walked  to  the  steps  and 
sat  down.  "Friends  are  coming  for  me  here,"  he 
explained. 


36  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Of  what  blood  was  he,  of  what  tradition?  Only 
New  England  conld  produce  just  this,  I  thought ;  yet 
in  his  aspect  the  senses  gleamed  untamed.  The 
Greeks  would  not  have  imagined  fauns  in  the  woods, 
had  there  not  been  Greeks  whose  features  and  whose 
ways  put  this  into  their  heads.  Now  and  then  in 
these  days,  a  face  will  make  one  think  of  this.  The 
ears  of  this  boy,  close  set  to  his  head,  ran  up  to  slight 
points,  his  brows  slanted  down  to  each  other,  almost 
meeting,  and  beneath  them  the  wide  set  of  his  eyes 
brought  woodlands  and  myths  into  the  mind,  and 
nymphs  fleeting  and  hoping  to  be  caught.  I  watched 
him  as  he  sat  on  the  cathedral  steps,  brooding,  a 
nature-woven  Pagan  and  Christian,  like  all  the  best 
of  our  human  texture. 

''Count  me  among  the  children  as  to  this,"  I  said, 
and  as  he  looked  blank,  "as  to  this  church,"  I 
explained,  "that  towers  behind  us  with  its  tremen- 
dous assertion.  I  do  not  need  leaden  images,  and  to 
me  that  stands  for  the  greatest  thing  in  life.  I,  too, 
have  been  round  and  round.  It  is  what  that  stands  for 
that  makes  this  world  sensible  instead  of  senseless  to 
me." 

To  this  he  seemed  to  pay  no  attention.  He  lounged 
on  the  steps,  looking  at  nothing,  his  body  as  motion- 
less as  his  eyes. 

"When  the  Lusitania  happened,"  he  said,  "I  was 
about  through  school.  But  my  father  insisted  I  must 
stay  at  home  and  go  to  college.  I  wouldn't  go, 
though ;  I  told  father  I  was  going  to  France.  I  was 
with  the  French  from  August  1916  till  we  came  in. 
Then  I  transferred."  He  made  one  of  his  pauses 
here.     "  So  I  have  seen  it. " 

I  said  nothing. 


AN   INN    OF    THE    SOUL  37 

"Yes.  I  have  seen  it,"  he  resumed.  His  voice 
sank  and  once  more  he  said,  "I've  seen  it."  After  a 
little  while,  he  added:  "I  am  glad  I  didn't  know 
beforehand.     I  don't  believe  I'd  have  gone  in." 

' '  I  believe  you  would. ' ' 

What  had  made  him  shake  his  father  off  and  go, 
what  had  plunged  him  into  revolt  when  he  came  into 
the  serene  presence  of  this  church,  was  just  what  had 
built  this  church  seven  hundred  years  ago ;  what  long 
before  Christ  had  made  a  great  man  say  in  Asia :  "Do 
not  unto  others  what  you  would  not  have  them  do 
unto  you. ' '  The  same  light  that  lived  in  the  heart  of 
the  Oriental  teacher,  of  the  cathedral  at  Amiens, 
lived  in  the  heart  of  this  boy  from  the  New  World. 
His  denials,  his  fury,  and  the  horror  that  caused  his 
voice  to  sink  came  from  the  eternal  religion  in  the 
heart  of  man.  How  had  it  come  there,  why  did  it 
persist?  Logic  gives  no  answer,  nothing  but  a  far- 
fetched guess.  Logic  proves  in  three  steps  that  a 
brook  cannot  flow ;  that  all  motion  is  impossible.  Try 
to  make  logic  fit  anything  that  moves,  like  life  or 
water,  try  to  make  it  fit  anything  except  what  is  sta- 
tionary, like  the  multiplication-table,  and  you  will 
speedily  reach  falsehood. 

"Why,  I  was  innocent!"  exclaimed  the  boy  on  the 
steps.  "America  is  innocent — except  those  who 
saw  it. ' ' 

"I  understand.  I've  seen  its  work  today.  You 
saw  it  at  work.  But  you  mustn't  be  one  of  those 
whose  survival  depends  on  never  knowing  man's  full 
wickedness  and  life's  whole  horror.  Very  few  ever 
do  come  to  know  it,  and  it  would  kill  many  of  them 
if  they  did.    But  you  mustn't  let  it  kill  you." 

He  got  up.    "It's  damp,"  he  said,  and  began  to 


32707" 


38  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

walk  a  few  steps  one  way,  and  back  again,  stumbling 
occasionally. 

''What  good  have  all  their  cathedrals  done?"  he 
demanded.  ''You  say  this  one  has  been  here  since 
the  thirteenth  century.  How  many  years  of  peace 
has  it  seen1?  How  many  years  since  Christ  lived 
have  been  years  of  peace  f  And  there  are  your  sand 
bags  piled  up  to  keep  your  Christ  and  your  apostles 
and  your  Day  of  Judgment  from  being  smashed  to 
powder  by  the  worst  and  latest  war  of  the  lot. 
Everything  that  heathen  savages  ever  did  has  been 
done  again  and  more  knowingly,  and  new  things  have 
been  done  that  savages  didn't  know  how  to  do;  more 
kinds  of  killing,  more  kinds  of  victims,  more  kinds  of 
torture,  more  brains  crazed,  more  tatters  of  human 
flesh,  more  ashes  of  human  bones,  more  holes  where 
houses  and  cradles  were,  than  were  ever  in  the  world 
before;  war  on  land,  war  in  the  air,  war  under  the 
sea.  Science  is  alive  and  kicking;  but  where 's  your 
'Peace  on  earth,  good  will  to  men'?"  In  these  last 
words  he  came  near  to  losing  the  controlled  level  of 
his  voice. 

' '  Yes ;  the  worst  war  of  the  lot, ' '  I  assented.  ' '  All 
your  words  are  true  but  the  last.  Good  will  to  men 
is  not  dead.  Never  was  it  alive  so  much.  Against 
the  worst  war  of  the  lot  has  been  raised  the  greatest, 
deepest,  widest  outcry  that  ever  the  world  has  heard. 
No  outcry  used  to  be  raised  at  all.  Slaughter  of  the 
defenceless,  burning,  pillaging,  torturing,  were  held 
the  soldier's  perquisite  and  duty,  and  priests  blessed 
his  performance  of  it.  No  protest  came  from  any- 
where. Today  these  monstrous  deeds  break  the  rule. 
When  these  very  stones  were  laid,  where  was  your 
Red  Cross,  where  your  trained  nurse,  where  your 


AN   INN   OF   THE   SOUL  39 

dozens  and  scores  of  organizations  for  relief  work! 
What  nation  sent  help  to  Belgium  when  the  Duke  of 
Alva  ground  down  the  Netherlands?  And  so  these 
stones,  these  stones  sacred  to  Christ,  have  seen  all 
that  mercy  happen  in  the  name  and  for  the  sake  of 
Christ.  Yes,  today  your  Hun  breaks  the  rule. 
What  rule?  The  rule  of  pity.  What  is  it  that  is 
new,  what  is  it  that  has  grown,  slowly  grown,  through 
the  red  and  smoking  centuries?  Pity,  mercy,  care 
for  the  weak,  hospitals,  homes  for  the  old,  homes  for 
the  child,  for  the  cripple,  the  deaf  and  blind,  protec- 
tion even  for  animals :  Pity.  The  glimmer  of  light 
that  shone  in  those  words  'do  not  unto  others  what 
you  would  not  have  them  do  unto  you'  has  come  down 
the  ages,  through  Asia,  through  Greece,  through 
Rome,  through  Christ,  who  enlarged  it,  sometimes  a 
bare  spark,  but  never  wholly  extinguished,  until  to- 
day it  glows  in  millions  and  millions  of  breasts.  It 
makes  apostles  of  tenderness  and  healing  out  of 
doctors  whose  reason  denies  God,  yet  who  give  their 
lives  in  acting  out  the  word  of  God.  The  simple- 
minded — those  whom  you  have  called  children — have 
always  needed  and  always  will  need  revelation, 
miracle,  mythology,  the  not-true,  the  thing  in  that 
cathedral  which  you  decline  ever  to  swallow  again. 
But  you'll  not  need  to  swallow  it.  Use  your  spirit 
as  well  as  your  reason.  Tear  off  the  mythology  from 
any  belief — Greek,  Asiatic,  Latin,  Christian — and 
you  will  find  beneath  those  very  various  rags  some- 
thing abiding,  something  noble,  true,  something  that 
all  the  beliefs  have  held  in  common :  the  mysterious, 
nameless  thing  which  the  Greeks  had  their  phrase 
for,  and  the  Latins  had  theirs,  and  the  French  have 
theirs,  the  thing  that  makes  what  we  Americans  call 


40  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

a  'white  man/  Let  it  go  at  that.  Oh,  I,  too,  have 
been  round  and  round — and  years  before  ever  you 
began  it !  No  more  than  you,  do  I  attempt  to  grapple 
with  space ;  and  I  don't  attempt  to  grapple  with  God. 
I  don't  see  why  the  conclusions  of  the  head  and  those 
of  the  heart  should  so  often  deny  each  other.  I  don't 
see  why  reason  should  often  so  overwhelmingly 
destroy  belief,  and  emotion — the  spirit — the  heart — 
often  so  overwhelmingly  affirm  it.  But  will  you  tell 
me  why  we  should  accord  more  validity  to  the  con- 
clusions of  the  head  than  to  those  of  the  heart?  I 
believe  that  the  head's  reasoning  fits  stationary 
things,  while  the  heart's  fits  life.  I  believe  that  the 
cathedral  holds  the  truth.  Look  at  it,  inside  and  out. 
Don't  let  the  mythological  rags  which  help  children 
to  see  the  truth  blind  you  to  the  truth.  I  believe  that 
Christianity  is  the  latest  and  greatest  sign  of  some- 
thing greater  even  than  itself;  the  same  thing  that 
all  preceding  temples  of  any  race  and  any  age  had 
something  of,  only  not  so  much  as  this  cathedral 
holds.  All  along  from  his  infancy,  man  has  built 
these  inns  for  the  soul.  After  a  while  the  soul  moves 
on  to  be  rid  of  the  rags  of  mythology  which 
have  begun  to  stifle  it.  Truth  says  forever  to  man, 
'I  exist ;  but  dare  to  utter  me,  and  I  will  turn  to  a  lie 
upon  your  lips. '  But  today,  you  and  I  hold  one  thing 
at  least  which  both  the  head  and  the  heart  can  unite 
upon :  Pity.  Pity  has  come  into  the  world  and  grown 
great,  while  wickedness  is  no  larger  than  at  the 
beginning ;  it  only  has  more  tools  to  do  its  work  with. 
Why  do  we  value  good  men  most  of  all,  miss  them 
most  of  all  when  they  leave  the  world?  Because  the 
heart  loves  goodness  best  and  goodness  comes  from 
somewhere. ' ' 


AN   INN   OF   THE   SOUL  41 

I  stopped.  I  had  been  surprised  into  this.  It  was 
almost  as  if  it  had  said  itself  for  me  or  in  spite  of  me. 
I  now  became  aware  that  the  boy  had  ceased  walking 
back  and  forth  and  was  standing  quite  still,  his 
untamed  eyes  fixed  upon  me. 

"I  believe  you  have  said  something,' *  he  slowly 
muttered.  "If  head  and  heart  could  get  together  on 
anything " 

He  stared  at  the  cathedral  once  again.  "That 
might  make  one  serene, ' '  he  added. 

A  car  came  with  two  young  French  officers,  one  of 
whom  hailed  him  in  friendly  English  and  quickly 
gave  him  help  as  he  tried  to  pull  himself  in.  As  they 
started  he  said  to  me  gruffly : 

"I  am  glad  we  met." 

Yes,  we  had  met.  He  had  not  asked  my  name  nor 
I  his.  Neither  knew  where  the  other  lived.  We 
were  without  clue  or  context  to  each  other.  It  was 
not  that  we  expressly  forbore  from  the  usual  ques- 
tions, but  that  from  first  to  last  we  never  came  to  the 
surface  where  usual  questions  are  exchanged. 


VI 

THE     FRAGMENTS     THAT     REMAIN — 2 

Wasted  beyond  hope  of  repair  would  have  been  our 
next  day,  but  for  some  members  of  the  British  Army. 
These  came  to  our  help  when  we  were  floundering  like 
a  ship  without  a  rudder  or  compass  at  what  seemed 
to  me  then,  and  still  seems  to  me  as  I  look  back,  the 
uncharted  edge  of  the  world.  Our  chauffeur  had 
known  his  way  and  the  lay  of  the  land  through  which 
we  had  come  so  far.  In  the  cold  little  room  with  its 
frozen  piano  at  the  Hotel  du  Ehin  he  followed  my 
finger  as  I  ran  it  over  the  route  I  had  laid  out  for  us ; 
and  he  assented  intelligently,  with  readiness,  even 
with  eagerness,  when  I  asked  him  at  each  point  could 
we  do  this,  and  this ;  would  the  whole  journey  be  too 
long  for  one  day,  if  we  started  early?  Not  at  all,  he 
answered.  I  cast  up  the  sum  of  the  various  distances 
for  him,  I  consulted  with  him  about  lunch — in  short,  I 
collaborated  every  step  and  every  hour  with  him. 

I  had  to  choose,  steering  my  proposed  course 
closely  by  the  map  and  by  what  I  had  learned  in  Paris 
from  army  officers.  The  chauffeur  saw,  heard,  rati- 
fied each  one  of  my  points  with  that  lucid,  compre- 
hending diction  which  is  native  to  France  and  envied 
by  the  rest  of  us.  How  should  I  know  beforehand 
that  beneath  that  fluent  courtesy  he  was  a  forlorn 
imbecile  I 

Our  start  was  prompt.    The  sky  threatened,  but 

42 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  43 

not  yet  imminently.  Thank  fortune  I  took  with  me  my 
maps.  Former  journeys  had  made  me  familiar  with 
the  fact  that  taking  the  right  turn  as  one  goes  through 
the  French  country  is  not  at  all  the  puzzle  which  even 
a  village  of  ten  or  a  dozen  clustering  cottages  can 
present.  In  these  little  knots  one  is  frequently 
tangled  and  emerges  in  a  wrong  direction.  But  I  was 
not  worried  yet  as  we  made  our  way  out  of  Amiens. 
I  was  not  even  yet  worried  by  our  chauffeur's  stop- 
ping two  or  three  times  while  we  were  still  in  the 
town  to  inquire  the  road.  What  I  had  forgotten  was 
the  fact,  made  equally  familiar  by  former  journeys, 
that  any  French  peasant  who  knows  the  road  farther 
than  ten  kilometres  beyond  his  manure  pile  is  a 
prodigy  of  travelled  experience.  To  be  sure,  the 
townsfolk  of  Amiens  were  not  quite  peasants — but 
the  town  of  Doullens  was  our  first  point,  and  Doullens 
was  distant  twenty-seven  kilometres.  This  stretch 
proved  too  wide  for  the  knowledge  of  such  townsfolk 
of  Amiens  as  pointed  the  way  to  our  chauffeur. 

My  map  was  spread  out.  So  I  had  learned  to  keep 
it,  not  alone  against  going  wrong,  but  to  herald 
approaching  little  places  as  well.  I  looked  out  for 
Poulainville.  It  didn't  come.  I  supposed  that  we 
had  passed  it.  I  wondered  if  we  should  see  Coisy. 
We  didn  't.  I  concluded  it  lay  too  far  to  the  right  to 
be  seen.  But  I  was  rather  surprised  at  getting  no 
sight  of  Villers-Bocage.  Presently  our  road  struck 
me  as  being  narrower  than  the  road  to  Doullens 
looked  on  the  map.  I  spoke  a  word  to  our  chauffeur. 
He  reassured  me  with  true  French  competence.  I 
believed  him  abjectly,  but,  when  I  read  upon  a  corner 
wall  the  name  Contay  and  there  was  no  Contay  on 
the  map  of  the  road  behind  us  or  before  us,  nothing 


44  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

at  all  like  that  all  the  way  to  Doullens,  I  spoke 
another  word  to  the  chauffeur.  You  who  know  the 
history  of  the  war,  know  well  many  reasons  for  my 
wishing  to  see  Doullens.  Near  that  place  the  Huns 
had  knowingly  bombed  a  hospital  full  of  wounded 
Canadians  and  their  nurses.  Papers  upon  the 
aviator  captured  afterwards  proved  this :  the  hospital 
was  marked  conspicuously  upon  these  with  a  cross : 
so  his  bombs  were  accurately  dropped  upon  the  sick- 
beds and  turned  them  to  death-beds.  But  this  was 
not  my  chief  reason.  I  had  one,  and  it  would  have 
been  enough  without  the  others.  Here  at  this  place 
Doullens,  in  a  garden,  General  Pershing  had  said 
some  momentous  words  at  the  close  of  a  momentous 
conclave.  That  was  a  spot  I  wished  to  see.  This 
time  the  chauffeur  was  less  successful  with  his 
reassuring  French  competence.  He  reiterated  that 
we  were  going  quite  the  right  way,  quite  the  best 
possible  way,  but  I  held  to  it  that  we  were  not  going 
the  way  to  Doullens. 

"Oh,  no,  monsieur,"  said  the  chauffeur,  in  a 
surprise  as  perfect  as  if  the  word  Doullens  had  never 
been  uttered  between  us.  "But  we  are  going  to 
Arras  much  straighter  than  one  goes  by  way  of 
Doullens.  The  road  by  Doullens  is  destroyed, 
monsieur.     That  is  well  known. ' ' 

Then,  when  had  it  become  well  known  to  him? 
And  why  had  he  never  told  me  so  till  now?  But  why 
ask  him  such  a  question?  Why  ask  a  Frenchman 
why  he  is  French  ?  Or  why,  for  that  matter,  ask  why 
the  good  qualities  should  be  dealt  out  scatteringly 
among  the  nations,  and  nobody  hold  all  the  trumps  ? 

"Go  on,"  I  requested  him  resignedly;  "go  on  to 
Arras." 


THE   FRAGMENTS   THAT   REMAIN     45 

After  all,  if  no  road  went  to  Doullens  at  present,  at 
present  one  couldn't  go  there.  Without  it  our  day 
would  still  be  crowded  with  the  deepest  interest.  I 
settled  back  into  calm — partial  calm.  Certainly  we 
were  headed  towards  Arras  upon  a  way  straighter 
than  if  we  had  curved  to  it  westward  through 
Doullens.  My  calm  was  but  partial,  because  upon 
the  map  our  present  road  looked  a  slight  thing,  a 
narrow  line  of  red,  while  a  broad  important  red  stripe 
represented  the  road  to  Doullens.  How  singular  to 
indicate  a  destroyed  highway  thus!  But  a  rag  of 
faith  in  our  chauffeur  was  still  left  me. 

We  went  through  some  more  little  places,  or  what 
had  been  little  places  once,  and  before  long  my  rag 
of  faith  began  to  tear.  In  the  chauffeur's  back  I 
seemed  to  discover  a  less  assured  expression.  The 
appearance  of  our  road  was  growing  less  and  less  the 
sort  of  thing  that  keeps  up  a  man's  heart,  our  speed 
was  growing  more  and  more  cautious,  and  the  bumps 
had  ceased  to  be  occasional.  Rain  began  to  fall,  mud 
began  to  deepen,  stones  and  holes  became  the  floor 
of  this  thoroughfare.  We  crawled  up  a  hill  and 
through  a  village  street,  evidently  of  some  grace  and 
symmetry  once,  now  battered  featureless,  and  at 
perhaps  the  end  of  a  mile  reached  a  ridge,  went  on 
for  a  few  wallowing  yards,  and  came  to  a  halt.  You 
might  have  been  at  anchor  on  the  top  of  a  wave  of 
mud  struck  still,  in  a  mud  ocean  struck  still.  What 
wonder?  We  were  at  the  Sucrerie  beyond  Mailly- 
Maillet,  Beaumont  Hamel  was  at  our  right,  scarce  a 
mile  off.  A  waste  of  motionless,  featureless  undula- 
tions lay  ahead,  and  in  these  our  road  died  away,  sank 
to  nothing. 
As  well  as  I  can  remember,  the  chauffeur  sat  mute 


46  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

and  stationary,  like  the  obliterated  landscape.  Big 
heaps  of  shell  stood  about.  Barbed  wire  lay  every- 
where, ragged  or  rolled  into  rusty  coils.  It  straggled 
amid  deep  mud,  ruins,  and  stones.  The  rain  was 
now  pouring.  A  crumpled  single-track  railway 
crossed  what  had  been  the  road.  A  camion  stood 
near  by.  Some  English  soldiers  were  guarding  some 
German  prisoners.  These  worked  stolidly,  gathering 
the  shells.  It  was  now  eleven  o'clock,  we  had  been 
travelling  slowly  and  more  slow,  and  had  made  about 
thirty  kilometres,  instead  of  sixty  or  seventy,  when 
help  from  the  British  Army  came  to  us  at  this  point 
for  the  first  time  this  day. 

I  looked  out  of  our  car,  and  my  look  brought  a 
young  officer  up  to  it. 

' 'We  were  trying  to  get  to  Arras,"  I  said. 

"You  have  come  too  far.  You  must  go  back  a  bit 
and  turn  west  at  Hedauville,  and  go  round  by  Acheux. 
This  road  used  to  go  to  Arras,  but  it's  quite  gone 
wrong  itself,  you  see." 

"Oh,  yes,  I  do  see!  How  long  will  it  take  us  by 
Acheux?" 

He  considered  for  a  moment.  "You  might  do  it  in 
two  hours  and  a  half." 

At  this  my  heart  sank  indeed.  Two  hours  and  a 
half  to  Arras,  and  it  was  eleven  already !  We  were 
to  have  been  at  Lille  by  twelve-thirty,  at  Lille  we  were 
to  have  lunched,  and  Lille  was  twenty-five  or  thirty 
miles  beyond  Arras.  I  saw  my  whole  plan  of  the 
day  fall  to  nothing.  We  were  to  lose  not  Doullens 
alone,  but  Arras,  Vimy  Ridge,  Lens,  Lille,  and  the 
whole  returning  part  as  well,  Douai,  Arteux,  Cam- 
brai,  every  precious  point  that  I  had  chosen  for  this 
day  of  pilgrimage. 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  47 

''Where  do  you  come  from?"  asked  the  young 
officer. 

"  Amiens.' ' 

"You  should  have  gone  by  Doullens.  Why  didn't 
you?" 

"We  were  going,  but  they  told  our  chauffeur  that 
was  all  torn  up  still." 

"Well,  I  know  that's  not  true,  because  I  happen  to 
have  rebuilt  it  myself. ' ' 

What  was  there  to  do  but  laugh  ?  I  looked  at  the 
mud  and  I  looked  at  my  map.  Lille  had  been  the 
point  where  food  was  sure.  In  every  direction  about 
us  here  the  only  thing  we  could  be  sure  of  was  ruins. 
Yesterday,  when  there  was  no  need  for  it,  we  had 
provisions  with  us;  today  our  cheese  and  crackers 
and  chocolate  were  reposing  in  our  rooms  at  the  Hotel 
du  Rhin.  We  might  decide  to  go  without  refresh- 
ment and  push  on  into  space,  but  how  about  the 
chauffeur?  After  all,  his  fault  had  been  to  believe 
the  word  of  his  fellow-countrymen  in  preference  to 
my  map  and  me.  Well,  we  must  turn  round,  anyhow ; 
that  was  the  first  thing  to  do.  Our  plight  had 
gathered  a  little  group  of  starers  and  listeners.  Our 
chauffeur  couldn't  budge  the  stuck  car.  A  young 
German  prisoner  sprang  forward  to  help  push  it  so 
that  it  might  be  backed  and  turned.  He  was  natural, 
friendly,  anxious  to  be  of  use.  He  looked  less  than 
twenty.  Many  of  his  comrades  seemed  as  young. 
Many  had  amiable,  fresh,  and  even  handsome  faces. 
Our  young  German,  who  pushed  us  out  of  our  stick- 
ing-place  so  willingly  and  capably,  spoke  English. 
He  added  to  our  information  about  the  country  and 
the  state  of  the  roads.  Go  back  to  Amiens?  Not  if 
desperation  could  prevent.    If  we  could  not  see  what 


48  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

we  had  set  out  to  see,  let  us  at  least  try  to  see  some- 
thing else.  I  discovered  that  I  had  with  me  a  few 
forgotten  pieces  of  chocolate,  nothing  to  keep  our- 
selves and  the  chauffeur  going  all  day,  but  enough  to 
put  off  emptiness  when  this  should  begin.  Again  I 
looked  at  my  map  and  there  found  inspiration :  Albert 
was  not  far  off — not  far,  that  is,  in  ordinary  times. 
Yes,  Albert  was  accessible.  The  young  officer  gave 
directions  to  us;  our  collapsed  expedition  had  ap- 
pealed to  him,  and  he  entered  into  our  anxiety  to  save 
some  fragments  of  our  broken  day.  He  did  not 
address  our  chauffeur  at  all;  he  had  taken  the 
measure  of  this  moral  paralytic  and  as  the  hours 
wore  on  this  measure  was  repeatedly  verified.  In  the 
various  moments  of  stress  through  which  we  were 
destined  still  to  pass,  this  chauffeur  displayed  the 
enterprise  of  a  stale  poultice. 

We  thanked  the  member  of  the  British  Army  who 
had  appeared  to  us  in  the  nick  of  time — the  first  nick 
of  our  time — and  our  car  slowly  waded  out  of  that 
huge  pie  of  mud,  away  from  the  ridge,  the  camion, 
the  prisoners  and  the  soldiers,  and  down  that  sluggish 
rise  up  which  we  had  so  vainly  toiled. 

Back  we  went  into  an  alarmingly  small  lane  which 
tried  but  did  not  upset  our  faith  in  the  British  officer. 
This  led  us  to  a  biggish  road  (bon  pave,  said  the 
map)  and  so  quite  soon  to  Albert. 

To  see  this  place,  known  to  all  the  world  by  its 
Virgin  that  hung  from  the  shattered  church  tower  so 
long  in  mid-air,  was  to  save  something  at  least  to 
show  for  our  day.  Were  we  to  save  anything  more  T 
It  did  not  look  so  just  then.  The  sky  was  black,  the 
rain  poured  thick,  the  wind  shook  our  car  as  it  stood. 
Outside  lay  dismantled  Albert,  dumb  and  prone. 


THE   FRAGMENTS   THAT   REMAIN     49 

Bleak  streams  of  water  spouted  from  holes  and  slants 
of  blind  fragments.  We  had  been  told  to  expect  no 
food  here.  We  could  see  no  sign  of  life,  only  ruins 
and  mud ;  but  through  the  violence  of  the  wind  again 
the  great  silence  of  France  was  perceptible.  I  first 
became  aware  of  it  here,  and  then  remembered  its 
presence  all  along  our  road  since  leaving  Amiens. 
We  had  re-entered  it  but  a  little  way  outside  the  town. 
A  few  soldiers  appeared.  To  one  who  passed  near  I 
said,  ''Was  there  a  crumb  of  food  anywhere  within 
reach?"  And  now  stepped  in  the  British  Army  and 
saved  us  and  our  day  the  second  time.  At  my  words, 
"a  crumb  of  food,"  the  face  of  the  soldier  changed 
from  indifference  to  brotherhood. 

''Come  with  us,"  he  said,  "we're  just  going  to 
mess." 

He  called  another  soldier  and  to  his  care  committed 
our  car  and  our  lump  of  a  chauffeur.  We  walked 
along  with  him  through  the  ravaged  street. 

He  conducted  us  through  puddles  and  across  fallen 
walls  in  the  pelting  rain  to  a  little  house  built  out  of 
ruins  by  German  prisoners ;  a  little  hollow  of  shelter 
and  comfort,  set  in  the  midst  of  the  haggard  debris. 
To  step  into  such  a  box  of  snugness  from  such  a  wild 
and  disordered  outside  once  again  took  one  into  that 
same  unearthly  region  of  marvel,  or  of  dream, 
through  which  our  stunned  minds  had  been  moving 
yesterday:  gaunt,  shrivelled,  wasted  France — and 
then,  suddenly,  in  the  heart  of  it,  this  warm  little  hole 
full  of  England! 

Inside  the  hole  were  three  of  our  guide's  comrades : 
Tommies  all,  and  every  one  so  friendly,  so  human,  so 
simply  and  plainly  glad  to  make  us  welcome  and  share 
with  us  whatever  they  had!     They  had  a  fireplace 


50  NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 

and  a  fire ;  none  before  this  had  we  seen  in  France. 
One  of  the  Tommies  was  a  Scotch  boy,  I  think,  and 
one  the  very  marrow  of  English  England;  blond, 
blue-eyed,  inimitably  and  unfathomably  humorous. 
I  never  learned,  but  I  suspected  him  to  be  city-bred. 
So  developed  a  philosophy,  so  mature  a  sophistica- 
tion, such  a  readiness  of  both  words  and  wit,  could 
hardly  have  ripened  in  the  hedges.  He  made  himself 
the  spokesman  for  the  party. 

We  seldom  measure  how  cold  we  are  until  we  have 
come  from  chill  into  a  place  of  warmth.  Our  hosts 
poured  out  Scotch  whisky  liberally  for  us,  and  I  took 
a  long,  stiff,  reviving  drink  of  it. 

The  fire  burned,  civilizing  the  atmosphere;  books 
were  there,  a  few ;  and  a  few  pictures,  newspaper  and 
other,  tempered  the  walls.  A  piano  was  also  present, 
escaped  partially  alive  from  the  Huns.  Behind  the 
room  opened  a  tiny  kitchen  from  which  our  food  was 
now  carried  in.  Over  the  table  at  which  we  sat  hung 
an  empty  brass  shell  case.  This  was  the  Tommies ' 
dinner  bell.  Meat  and  potatoes  were  served,  and  tea 
in  cups  of  great  size.  Cheese  there  was,  and  sugar 
for  the  tea  instead  of  the  usual  saccharine. 

The  blond  Tommy  talked  along,  his  comrades 
evidently  liking  to  listen  to  him  as  much  as  we  did. 
He  relished  it,  too,  without  a  particle  of  vainglory, 
but  simply  because  his  thoughts  came  of  themselves 
and  surprised  and  delighted  him.  He  had  attained  a 
philosophy.  No  school  books  had  helped  him  to  this. 
If  education  had  fallen  to  his  lot,  I  think  he  could  have 
made  his  mark.  Perhaps  he  would  make  it  anyhow. 
I  doubt  his  being  over  twenty-five.  Life,  as  it  had 
come  along,  had  day  by  day  written  copiously  and 
clearly  upon   his   alert   mind;   and   this   war,   this 


THE    FRAGMENTS    THAT    REMAIN      51 

gigantic  adventure,  through  which  he  had  come  alive, 
had  evidently  set  free  in  him  every  power  of  observa- 
tion and  reflection  that  he  possessed. 

''She  hung  on  through  a  good  bit  of  it,"  he  said, 
"but  she  went  at  last." 

It  was  of  the  Virgin  that  he  spoke.  Pictures  of  her 
have  taught  her  appearance  to  us  all;  the  upright 
figure  with  the  unusual  stretching  aloft  of  her  child ; 
and  then,  after  the  bomb  had  struck  her,  the  hori- 
zontal form  in  the  air  at  right  angles  to  the  tower. 

Albert  had  been  dragged  from  hand  to  hand  and 
dragged  back.  It  was  when  they  had  let  it  go  for  the 
last  time  that  the  Huns  smashed  it  to  pieces,  as  they 
smashed  every  French  thing  that  they  had  time  to 
break  and  which  they  had  meant  to  keep.  Albert  had 
numbered  thirteen  thousand  inhabitants.  Of  these 
three  hundred  now  lived  here,  in  cellars. 

The  Tommy  had  been  four  years  in  the  war  and 
four  times  at  Albert.  Against  whatever  he  had  been 
dashed  to  his  temporary  hurt  by  the  tides  of  destruc- 
tion, he  had  not  sunk  amid  the  back  and  forth  of  their 
churning ;  he  had  floated  out  like  a  cork,  buoyant  and 
sound. 

"What  would  you  do  to  the  Kaiser?"  he  asked  us. 
* '  Or  would  you  let  him  go  ? " 

We  had  reached  the  Kaiser,  inevitably.  The 
Kaiser,  in  the  spring  of  1919,  was  reached  more  often 
than  he  is  reached  today.  The  voices  of  the  world 
were  then  still  busy  propounding  various  dooms  for 
him ;  and  various  dooms  were  forthwith  propounded 
at  our  lunch  table.  Everyone  had  his  idea  as  to  what 
would  be  good  and  fitting  for  the  Kaiser.  None  were 
barbarous,  as  I  remember,  but  all  were  what  you 


52  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

would  call  thorough.  The  Tommy  was  clever  enough 
to  hit  my  own  with  his  first  shot. 

"I  have  my  plan  for  him,"  I  said. 

"You  would  have  'im  'anged  in  front  of  'is  palace 
at  Potsdam." 

"Right,"  I  answered. 

"Right  it  would  be.  But  don't  ye  know  not  one  of 
'em  '11  ever  do  a  thing  to  'im?" 

"Well,"  I  said,  "things  have  been  done  to  people." 

1 '  They  '11  do  nothing  to  'im. ' ' 

"They  didn't  let  Napoleon  go  scot-free." 

"Ow,"  said  the  Tommy,  with  a  look  that  no  words 
can  reproduce,  "  'ee  wasn't  related  to  any  of  'em." 

This  unexpected  generalization  was  presently  fol- 
lowed by  another.  It  was  after  they  had  been  telling 
me  the  history  of  Albert,  as  known  to  themselves 
since  1914,  the  destitution  of  its  people,  and  the 
obliteration  of  the  very  sites  of  where  their  homes 
had  stood,  that  I  told  him  about  the  lady  at  Noyon,  the 
lady  who  came  back  from  Nevers,  and  whom  I  had 
last  seen  searching  for  her  house.  This  set  going  at 
once  the  blond  Tommy's  philosophizing. 

"I  wouldn't  come  back,"  he  stated. 

"You  mean  to  find  your  house?"  I  asked  him. 

' '  I  wouldn  't  do  that.  The  French  are  sentimental. 
They  say  we  English  'ave  no  sentiment.  I  think  we 
'ave  just  as  much  as  the  French.    But " 

"But  you  don't  mention  it?"  I  ventured  to  put  in. 

All  the  Tommies  gave  a  barely  visible  nod,  and  he 
continued : 

"We'd  not  come  back  to  our  'ouse,  with  it  looking 
like  that.  We'd  keep  away  from  it,  an'  live  some- 
where else." 

It  was  not  for  me  to  comment  or  philosophize  any 


THE    FRAGMENTS    THAT    REMAIN      53 

more  than  I  had  dared  to  do  in  that  single  remark 
which  I  had  interpolated.  It  had  fared  well,  and  I 
would  not  risk  spoiling  it  by  another  which  might 
fare  ill.  I  longed  for  the  leisure  of  a  day  or  two  in 
which  to  exchange  as  many  confidences — private, 
public,  and  international — with  these  Tommies  as 
they  would  permit.  Apart  from  their  desire  to  help 
us  out  they  were  really  glad  to  see  us.  What  wonder? 
We  made  a  break  in  their  gruesome  task  at  Albert. 
This  task  was  disinterment.  Upon  the  hill  and  over 
the  hill  lay  the  dead,  not  by  the  hundred,  but  by  many 
thousands. 

"It  'elps  their  folks  at  'ome  a  lot  to  have  'em  cared 
for,"  the  Tommy  explained. 

"Are  you  able  to  know  them  all?"  I  asked. 

"About  'arf  of  'em  can  be  identified,"  he  said. 

These  British  soldiers  did  not  do  the  actual  dig- 
ging, they  were  too  few.  They  were  in  charge  of 
some  forty  "Chinks,"  we  learned  from  them.  And 
among  these  "Chinks"  they  had  found  three  women 
in  disguise. 

The  blond  Tommy  made  a  final  generalization  to 
me.  Our  meal  was  ended,  our  chauffeur  waitmg 
somewhere  for  us  with  the  car,  our  plan  of  pilgrimage 
laid  out  for  us,  and  the  Tommy  and  I  climbing  in  the 
rain  together  over  some  heaps  that  had  been  houses. 
I  spoke  to  him  of  the  pitiful  destruction  of  old  archi- 
tecture in  France  which  no  modern  builder  would 
ever  make  again. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "the  French  'ave  a  great  idea  of 
the  beautiful.    And  a  very  poor  one  of  sanitytion. ' ' 

I  wish  I  were  to  know  his  career  henceforth,  but 
that  is  not  likely.  He  stood  in  need  of  but  few  books. 
His  brain  was  awake  and  open  and  the  war  had 


54  NEIGHBOKS   HENCEFORTH 

educated  it  to  a  point  not  commonly  reached  upon  the 
benches  of  our  schools. 

Between  Albert  and  Bapaume,  an  appalling  stage 
of  eighteen  kilometres,  the  strokes  of  war  had 
scourged  the  face  of  the  earth  to  a  blind  pulp.  On 
either  side  the  road  the  land  was  a  mere  featureless 
confluence  of  bruises  and  welts.  Close  at  hand,  near 
enough  for  the  eye  to  see  and  count  each  different 
kind  of  rubbish  and  scar,  and  seam,  and  pock-mark, 
one  noted  rusty  cans,  rusty  wire,  rusty  shards  of 
metal,  holes  and  mounds,  graves  alone,  and  by  twos 
and  threes,  arranged  and  unarranged,  scattered  and 
continuous,  their  pale  crosses  sticking  up  along  the 
road  and  outward  from  it  until  their  slim,  incessant 
pattern  faded  into  a  distance,  where  lay  pieces  of 
tanks,  and  the  dead  trees  pointed  crookedly  up  like 
jagged  fingers  of  bone.  From  time  to  time  came  by 
the  little  towns — Becordel,  Pozieres,  Le  Sars,  lying 
upon  the  dead  land  like  dead  leaves.  Far  away  upon 
each  side  of  us  the  welts  and  bruises  blurred  indis- 
tinguishably,  merging  into  a  wide,  blank,  strange- 
colored,  mangy  waste.  Upon  this  tremendous,  deso- 
lation the  rain  descended  from  a  sombre  sky.  I 
thought  of  certain  bad  lands  in  our  West.  Their 
aspect,  with  its  hues  suggesting  some  sickness  of  the 
soil,  some  sterility  brought  on  by  a  curse,  was  like 
this  lost  look  of  the  earth  between  Albert  and 
Bapaume.  But  beneath  the  resemblance  was  a  dif- 
ference that  went  to  the  bottom  of  things.  The 
Western  bad  lands  were  of  nature's  doing,  boiled  or 
baked,  and  so  cooked  to  their  strange  chemical  look 
when  our  continent  was  shaping  and  before  man  was 
there.  These  bad  lands  of  France  had  once  waved 
with   grain,    rustled   with    leaves,    smelt    of    fruit 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  55 

blossoms  and  gardens.  Their  present  leprosy  had 
been  dealt  them  by  the  hand  of  man.  This  explained 
suddenly  to  me  the  secret  of  the  French  silence,  why 
it  held  all  motion  and  all  noise  in  a  hollow  that  was 
like  a  great,  cold,  dead  hand.  In  the  overhanging 
silence  of  our  bad  lands  there  is  that  which  may  well 
fill  the  perceiving  spirit  with  solemnity,  even  some- 
times possibly  with  awe;  but  that  silence  speaks  of 
the  mystery  of  the  universe,  while  this  French  silence 
spoke  of  the  mystery  of  evil. 

Through  the  continuing  tempest  we  came  to 
Bapaume,  another  town  dashed  to  empty  fragments. 
It  was  smaller  than  Albert,  numbering  thirty-five 
hundred  in  its  days  of  prosperity;  two  hundred  of 
them  were  then  living  here,  as  the  three  hundred  of 
Albert  were  living,  in  cellars.  Twice  in  the  grasp  of 
the  Huns,  like  Albert,  they  had  given  it  the  same  fate, 
squeezing  it  to  death  when  they  found  that  they  had 
to  drop  it  from  their  grasp.  The  crushed  beams  of 
machinery  toppled  like  trees  leaning  together  after 
a  hurricane.  Not  a  house  stood  whole.  Disabled 
tanks  sprawled,  dripping,  along  the  streets.  The  rain 
fell  now  so  furiously  that  we  were  glad  to  descry 
another  shelter.  It  held  no  comforts  like  that  of  the 
Tommies  at  Albert,  but  no  rain  came  through  the 
corrugated  arch  of  iron  which  formed  its  roof,  and 
beneath  this  we  sat  dry  in  the  company  of  some 
French  workmen.  The  wind  reverberated  through 
torn  sheets  of  metal  while  we  huddled  round  a  brazier 
with  them  and  they  told  us  of  themselves.  They 
were  friendly,  and  in  their  own  lucid  French  way, 
philosophic.  They  were  at  work  upon  some  wooden 
barracks  to  furnish  better  lodging,  I  suppose,  for 
those  who  were  now  eating  and  sleeping  in  cellars. 


56  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

They  spoke,  as  I  say,  lucidly  and  quietly  about  their 
country,  but  not  happily.  It  was  not  what  had 
befallen  her  in  the  war,  but  her  present  state  and 
her  future,  and  what  was  befalling  her  in  the  peace, 
over  which  they  shook  their  dishevelled,  thoughtful 
heads. 

"France  is  ill-organized,"  said  one. 

"Look,  monsieur,"  said  another.  "In  the  matter 
of  tobacco.  This  is  a  part  of  our  supplies  which  they 
bring  us  to  keep  us  going.  Three  ounces  in  three 
weeks!"  He  made  a  gesture.  That  had  been  all  the 
smoking  supplied  to  him.  He  fed  a  little  charcoal  to 
the  brazier  with  his  thin,  discolored  fingers. 

In  the  matter  of  tobacco  my  companion  was  better 
organized  than  France,  and  he  left  with  them  all  that 
he  had  brought  for  the  day.  We  stopped  with  them 
a  little  while  longer,  talking  of  France  and  of  them- 
selves, while  our  chauffeur  finished  repairing  a  punc- 
ture. "We  left  them  looking  after  us  from  their  iron 
hut. 

Devastation  encompassed  us,  we  had  been  in  its 
midst  for  many  hours,  we  were  to  be  there  for  many 
more.  Never  did  it  abate,  never  did  we  pass  a  spot 
which  it  had  not  blighted,  never  a  house  which  was 
not  a  ruin,  nor  a  field  unswept  by  death.  Death  lay 
upon  the  surface,  death  lay  beneath.  There  is  an 
awful  line  spoken  in  "Lear" :  The  worst  is  not  while 
we  can  say,  "This  is  the  worst."  Between  Albert  and 
Bapaume  we  had  said,  "this  is  the  worst."  Now, 
during  the  nineteen  kilometres  between  Bapaume  and 
Peronne,  we  said  it  again.  The  strokes  of  annihila- 
tion to  our  eyes  seemed  here  to  cut  deeper :  more  little 
places — Beaulencourt,  La  Transloy,  Raucourt — lay 
like  dead  leaves  along  the  way,  the  pale  crosses 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  57 

stretched  outward  each  side  beyond  sight,  little  disv 
tinct  groups  of  them  making  a  sort  of  thin  mist,  it 
which  one  could  fancy  that  the  spirits  of  the  dead 
were  hovering.  Strewed  also  over  the  earth  as  far  as 
one  could  see  were  the  old  broken  shells,  the  old  wire, 
the  cans,  a  ceaseless  layer  of  rusty,  littered  refuse. 
Northward  and  eastward  this  spread  on  farther  than 
we  could  see  or  were  going  to  see,  beyond  Cambrai, 
and  Le  Cateau  and  Ypres,  away  over  the  frontier, 
sheeting  whole  counties  and  departments  with  this 
extinct  deposit  of  war. 

It  was  between  Bapaume  and  Peronne  that  we  first 
saw  shell  holes  in  their  fullest,  thickest  mass.  We 
stood  upon  the  edge  of  wide  spaces,  acres  upon  acres, 
which  once  had  been  smooth,  healthy  fields,  where 
now  not  one  blade  of  grass  was  to  be  seen.  As 
pestilence  can  pit  and  discolor  a  human  face,  until 
it  is  rough  with  holes  like  a  colander,  so  this  land 
was  pitted.  The  fertile  surface  wherein  seeds  and 
roots  can  flourish  was  gone,  baked,  charred,  cooked 
\o  an  ashen  compound,  into  which  the  bombs  by 
.bursting  had  plowed  up  and  kneaded  the  sterile, 
chalky  under-soil.  There  it  lay,  like  some  mass  of 
horrible  contagion.  Had  you  tried  to  cross  it,  every 
^tep  you  made  would  have  been  from  edge  to  edge 
)f  the  holes.  They  touched  each  other,  broke  into 
each  other.  Some  were  wide  and  deep,  some  looked 
as  if  one  might  jump  across  them.  Into  their  slop 
and  slime  the  rain  poured  steadily.  Sometimes  one 
could  look  across  and  see  where  they  ended,  and 
sometimes  one  could  not.  Had  one  tried  to  make 
a  way  over  them  I  do  not  think  one  would  have  ar- 
rived. Where  they  were,  life  had  been — pastures, 
groves,  crops,  cattle  walking  and  grazing,  the  voices 


58  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

of  grandchildren  playing,  the  voices  of  grandmothers 
calling  to  them.  I  looked  upon  the  ghost  of  a  land. 
As  it  spread  out  under  the  dark  sky  I  did  not  think 
that  the  storm  made  it  worse.  In  the  light  of  the  sun 
it  would  be  no  better.  It  did  not  seem  as  if  summer 
or  winter  could  make  any  difference  to  it.  It  looked 
as  if  the  four  seasons  which  we  know  would  never 
pay  their  visits  to  it  again,  but  that  a  changeless  sea- 
son of  its  own  was  always  here,  beneath  whose  light- 
less  day  it  would  stretch  in  all  the  years  to  come. 

As  at  Noyon,  so  at  Peronne  were  the  returning 
dwellers  to  be  seen,  clinging  to  their  old  places,  seek- 
ing out  their  hearths,  unearthing  possessions  which 
they  had  buried  before  they  took  flight.  Like  Albert 
and  Bapaume,  the  Huns  battered  it  down  when  they 
could  not  keep  it  as  their  booty.  The  message  which 
the  destroyers  had  left  behind  them  still  placarded 
the  ruined  front  of  the  town-hall — a  board  nailed  up, 
with  these  parting  words  of  advice  to  the  homeless 
French  of  Peronne: 

Nicht  argern  nur  wundem — 

Not  anger  but  wonder. 

How  could  there  be  either  anger  or  wonder  after 
four  years'  experience  of  their  acts? 

Other  messages  in  other  places  whence  they  were 
flying  to  save  their  skins  had  been  left  behind — mes- 
sages without  words :  in  Soissons  the  hidden  bombs 
had  killed  many  returning  people  in  1917.  In  1918, 
south  of  Cambrai,  when  the  destroyers  were  fleeing 
before  the  British,  they  had  concealed  one  of  these 
bombs  and  above  it  in  plain  sight  had  nailed  a  live 
kitten.  They  were  right  in  their  guess.  When  some 
British  Tommies  saw  and  heard  the  kitten,  they 
rushed  to  help  it  and  were  blown  to  atoms. 


THE   FRAGMENTS   THAT   REMAIN     59 

"How  you  must  hate  us,"  said  a  captured  Prussian 
officer  to  a  British  sailor  on  a  ship,  and  was  assured 
that  there  was  no  hate.  Surprised,  he  repeated  his 
remark,  and  received  the  same  answer. 

"It  is  impossible  that  you  should  not  hate  us,"  he 
heavily  insisted,  "when  we  have  done  you  so  much 
damage. ' ' 

"Oh,  no,"  said  the  sailor,  "we  don't  'ate  yer.  We 
just  looks  at  you  like  scum  or  vomit  or  some  other 
narsty  mess  to  be  swabbed  up." 

Through  this  region  of  the  Somme,  this  grave  of 
human  flesh  and  of  homes  and  towns,  all  lying  silent 
together,  we  continued  upon  our  way.  Marquaix, 
Roisel,  Hargicourt,  each  alike  was  quiet  and  dismem- 
bered; just  a  broken  spot  along  the  road,  with  the 
pale,  thin  crosses  and  the  crooked  skeleton  trees  and 
the  jagged  bits  of  houses  sticking  up  among  the 
mounds  and  shell  holes,  mile  after  mile.  At  some 
point  during  this  stage  of  our  journey,  the  sun  shone 
a  little  and  I  saw  that  its  light  cheered  nothing.  It 
showed  more  plainly  the  mists  made  by  the  crosses 
and  the  distant  clots  of  barbed  wire.  You  have  seen 
some  autumn  hillside  where  the  brambles  dried  by 
frost  spread  upon  the  open  land  like  rusty  clouds; 
thus,  far  off,  the  barbed  wire  blurred  the  slopes.  At 
Hargicourt,  though  my  map  showed  the  way,  we 
halted  at  the  sight  of  a  living  man  to  ask  him  the  road 
to  Bellicourt.  He  was  an  American,  a  "Y"  man,  and 
answered  us  right.  He  was  seeing  after  the  welfare 
of  several  hundred  "Chinks,"  he  told  us. 

We  were  very  glad  to  see  Bellicourt,  to  pause  and 
get  out  of  the  car  and  climb  up  and  down  by  the  steep 
entrance  of  that  canal  tunnel.  We  were  treading  the 
exact  earth  of  the  Hindenburg  Line.    Seven  months 


60  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

ago  almost  to  a  day — September  29th — October  1st, 
1918, — our  second  corps,  the  27th  and  30th  Divisions, 
had  so  battled  here,  together  with  the  Australians, 
as  to  win  a  word  of  high  praise  from  the  British 
General  under  whom  they  served.  The  rain  that  had 
sluiced  us  at  Hargicourt  was  now  holding  up.  We 
made  our  way  about  in  the  mud  through  which  our 
men  had  struggled.  Here  were  still  the  shell  craters 
and  the  labyrinth  of  trenches.  We  looked  down  the 
abrupt  slope  to  the  tunnel  wherein  the  Huns  had  so 
elaborately  and  for  so  long  made  their  electric-lighted 
nest,  and  out  of  which  we  had  helped  to  eject  them 
on  those  gallant  days.  No  church  was  here  in  which 
to  give  thanks  for  our  participation  in  the  capture  of 
this  position  and  to  think  upon  my  dead  and  living 
countrymen  who  fought  over  this  desperate  ground. 
I  gave  my  thanks  wordlessly,  in  the  open  air.  In  my 
mind  I  saw  the  cathedral  of  Amiens,  lofty,  tranquil, 
pensive,  living;  and  I  tore  away  a  piece  of  a  poster 
which  must  have  been  pasted  up  at  Bellicourt  soon 
after  its  re-taking  by  the  Allies.  It  requested  the 
men  to  deal  with  the  people  round  about  consider- 
ately, like  men,  not  like  Prussians.  It  was  wet  then 
from  the  rain  and  much  stained.  Today  it  is  stiff. 
I  put  it  away  with  a  little  bullet  from  a  garden  at 
Peronne,  whence  the  householder  returned  from  exile 
was  digging  his  silver,  his  china,  the  small  treasures 
of  domesticity  that  he  had  buried. 

Along  the  thirteen  kilometres  of  road  to  St.  Quen- 
tin  there  was  sometimes  more  sunlight,  as  I  remem- 
ber it,  but  never  a  change  in  the  gloomy  scene.  We 
skirted  one  shell  crater  not  yet  filled  in,  wide  and 
jagged  and  deep  like  a  quarry;  it  was  the  largest 
cavity  we  had  seen  so  far,  and  a  road  had  been  made 


THE   FRAGMENTS   THAT   REMAIN     61 

around  it.  Not  far  off  to  our  right  lay  the  remains 
of  a  little  place  with  a  name  whose  beauty  tinkles  like 
a  silver  bell :  Bellinglise.  All  France  is  musical  with 
names;  names  sonorous  that  chant  like  legends,  or 
gay,  that  trip  like  the  dances  of  old  jongleurs;  names 
full  of  overtones,  where  the  vowels  and  syllables  fall 
into  cadences  so  melodious,  that  to  read  them  aloud 
is  like  a  song.  Bellinglise !  The  mere  syllables  drew 
a  poem  from  Alan  Seeger.  That  is  all  I  know  of 
Bellinglise,  except  that  its  wreck  lay  there  by  the 
Hindenburg  Line. 

In  a  way  St.  Quentin  was  the  worst  sight  of  all 
among  the  ruined  towns  which  we  had  thus  far 
passed.  There  was  much  more  of  it  to  be  ruined  than 
at  Albert  or  Peronne,  and  the  whole  of  it  seemed  to  be 
destroyed.  It  lay  not  prone  upon  the  ground,  it  stood 
up,  it  presented  as  one  drew  near  to  it  a  vertical  as- 
pect ;  there  was  the  illusion  of  its  being  mostly  safe 
and  sound.  But  above  it  gaped  the  hulk  of  the  cathe- 
dral, splintered,  shattered,  sky  showing  through  its 
holes ;  and  once  we  were  among  the  streets  we  saw  the 
truth.  Here  again  in  this  town  came  the  sense  of 
scenery  painted  for  a  play  of  disaster.  Walls  that 
looked  steady  and  inhabited  from  a  short  distance, 
turned  sham  at  close  quarters,  like  wings  or  the  back 
drop  on  a  stage.  In  the  many  streets  that  we  went 
through  never  a  house  did  we  pass  that  was  not  gut- 
ted :  behind  the  mask  of  each  front,  ceilings  slumped 
to  floors,  stairs  sagged  to  cellars,  beams  blackened 
and  gnawed  by  fire  stuck  through  holes  in  tilted  roofs, 
mirrors  and  bureaus,  unscathed,  perched  alone  upon 
ledges  of  landing  over  gulfs  of  broken  plaster. 

By  the  time  that  we  reached  here,  we  had  become 
judges  of  ruins.    We  had  learned  to  name  their  kind 


62  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

at  sight,  and  approximately  to  gauge  their  maturity. 
These  vintages  of  destruction  fell  into  a  number  of 
classes.     There  was  the  farm  or  the  village  which 
had  happened  to  be  in  the  way  where  a  battle  was 
going  on.    It  may  have  fallen  at  the  hands  of  its 
friends  as  readily  as  at  those  of  the  enemy;  but 
whether  hit  by  French,  British,  or  German  shells,  its 
pushing  down  would  be  lateral,  from  the  missiles 
passing  horizontally  through  it.    There  was  the  dyna- 
mited dwelling,  the  work  of  mere  disappointed  greed 
and  malice.    Its  walls  might  often  still  be  upright,  or 
but  a  little  caving  in,  or  bulging  out.    No  shell  holes 
would  be  in  such  walls,  no  lateral  rents.     The  earth- 
quake would  be  up  and  down,  within  the  walls,  and  it 
would  be  the  floors  and  ceilings  and  crushed  things 
between  that  marked  this  class.    There  was  the  dwell- 
ing that  had  been  mined.     This  somewhat  resembled 
the  dynamited  sort.     The  difference  would  be  seen 
chiefly  in  the  clots  of  soil  which  had  been  heaved  into 
the  air  and  had  fallen  upon  the  top  of  beams  or 
lodged  in  high  crevices.    There  was  the  dwelling  that 
had  been  burned  by  the  pastilles  invented  by  the  skil- 
ful German  chemist,  Otswald.    In  these  there  would 
be  no  shaking  down  or  up,  no  slanting,  no  sign  of 
lateral  or  vertical  shock.    Everything  would  be  sim- 
ply and  quietly  gone  that  fire  could  burn,  leaving  the 
stones  or  the  melted  metal.     One  entire  village  had 
been  left  behind  thus  by  the  retreating  Huns.    The 
presence  of  plants  and  weeds  growing  about  upon 
various  elevations  of  a  ruin  marked  it  as  being  of 
the  earlier  war  days. 

Despite  the  state  of  St.  Quentin,  plenty  of  people 
were  to  be  met  in  the  streets.  I  suppose  that  these, 
too,  were  living  in  cellars.    Of  one  of  them  we  in- 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  REMAIN  63 

quired  the  way.  I  do  not  see  now  what  else  we  could 
have  done.  My  map  could  not  show  us  how  to  thread 
our  way  clean  through  from  one  side  of  the  town  to 
the  other  and  strike  the  right  turning.  It  could  and 
did  show  us  our  general  direction,  more  or  less  par- 
allel to  the  river,  and  near  enough  to  be  in  sight  of  it 
at  first,  I  imagined ;  and  this  I  explained  to  the  chauf- 
feur. We  were  to  keep  southwest,  I  said,  and  we 
should  cross  a  railroad  in  about  two  kilometres.  But 
I  made  no  objection  when  he  stopped  and  asked  of  an 
inhabitant  the  right  road  to  Jussy,  I  merely  remem- 
bered Doullens  uneasily.  We  were  told  at  once,  with- 
out pause  to  meditate,  the  right  way  to  Jussy,  and  I 
could  see  by  the  chauffeur's  back  that  this  word  from 
a  fellow  Frenchman  meant  more  to  him  than  anything 
I  and  my  map  could  say.  We  crossed  the  railroad 
remarkably  soon,  it  seemed  to  me,  quite  within  the 
city  limits,  and  I  saw  nothing  of  the  river.  A  good 
way  out  in  the  country,  after  nothing  was  as  I  ex- 
pected it  to  be,  I  forced  the  reluctant  chauffeur  to 
stop,  while  I  called  to  a  man  driving  a  wagon  with 
two  wheels,  how  far  were  we  from  Jussy?  He  did 
not  seem  to  know  the  name.  He  was  from  Origny, 
four  kilometres  onward.  Origny?  I  sought  my 
map.  There  was  no  such  place  on  the  road  to  Jussy. 
Origny?  I  found  it.  We  had  been  set  on  the  highway 
to  Guise.  It  was  as  if,  being  at  Chicago,  you  had 
asked  the  way  to  Omaha  and  had  been  carefully 
headed  for  Pittsburgh. 

1 ' Henceforth, "  I  detonated  to  the  chauffeur,  "you 
will  do  exactly  as  I  say  and  nothing  that  anybody 
else  says.  To  the  seventy-nine  kilometres  that  we  had 
still  to  go,  you  have  added  about  twenty-eight  more. 
Turn  round.    Go  straight  back." 


64  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

I  spread  the  map  upon  my  knees  and  there  I  kept  it. 

"Left,"  I  said  to  him  as  we  reached  the  rim  of  St. 
Qnentin. 

"Right,"  I  presently  ordered;  and  in  dne  time  we 
came  to  Jussy. 

Here,  with  imperishable  instinct,  he  was  taking  the 
wrong  turn,  but  I  hailed  him. 

"Right,"  I  commanded;  "and  cross  the  railroad, 
and  go  to  Ham. ' ' 

He  bleated  something  about  Chauny.  A  sign 
pointed  thither  by  the  road  he  had  tried  to  take. 

"Do  what  I  say  and  do  it  at  once,"  I  returned. 
"Do  you  want  to  take  us  round  by  Noyon  and  Roye 
that  we  saw  yesterday,  and  add  twenty  or  thirty  kilo- 
metres more  when  hours  are  growing  as  precious  as 
diamonds  ? ' ' 

The  sun  was  now  showing  itself  more  often  than 
during  the  stages  over  which  we  had  so  far  travelled, 
but  we  had  fallen  seriously  behind  time;  it  was  a 
westering  sun  that  shone,  and  our  journey  was  be- 
come a  race  with  the  ebbing  day.  At  the  points  where 
we  had  been  especially  told  to  stop,  Ham,  Nesle, 
Chaulnes,  Villers-Bretonneux,  there  could  be  no  stop- 
ping. We  must  rest  content  with  a  glance  at  each  as 
we  passed  through  it  with  the  careful  and  abated 
pace  which  bad  stretches  of  road  enforced  upon  us ; 
it  was  doubtful  if  the  light  would  last  to  our  journey's 
end.  This  seemed  so  uncertain  that  I  resolved  to 
forego  even  the  attempt  to  see  Villers-Bretonneux, 
and  decided  upon  what  looked  upon  the  map  like  a 
shorter  cut  to  Amiens  by  Rosieres. 

Perhaps  through  our  lateness  we  gained  another 
knowledge  of  the  desolation.  "We  saw  the  day  leave 
it,  as  we  made  the  best  speed  we  could  over  the  dis- 


THE    FRAGMENTS    THAT    REMAIN      65 

ordered  kilometres.  Furthermore,  many  parts  of  our 
road  now  lay  along  the  line  of  rail  over  which  fast, 
expensive  trains  used  to  run  direct  from  Calais  to 
Bale  and  Lucerne  and  the  Alps.  Thus,  having  seen 
the  tatters  of  towns  and  houses,  we  had  a  good  view 
of  this  uprooted  railroad,  alongside  of  which  we  fre- 
quently drove,  and  over  which  we  frequently  crossed. 
I  retain  in  mind  particularly  one  blown-up  spot  at 
which  there  seemed  to  have  been  important  and  large 
machinery  and  but  few  houses.  The  machinery  had 
been  spilled  and  splashed  over  the  railway  station  and 
the  houses  and  the  railroad  itself.  All  lay  lumped 
and  stirred  together,  like  a  gigantic  petrified  stew. 
Sidings  stuck  forth  from  beneath  heaps  of  cranks  and 
wheels,  vats  lay  bottom  side  up  between  detached 
doors  and  bushes  and  pieces  of  chimney,  and  one 
steam  whistle  severed  at  the  neck  had  evidently  flown 
through  the  air  and  now  sat  lonely  upon  a  truck  which 
had  been  dashed  from  the  rails. 

Ham  we  passed,  and  were  glad  to  put  it  behind  us. 
Its  name  rang  with  memories ;  it  was  strange  to  be 
glad  that  we  had  passed  it,  instead  of  sorry  that  we 
could  not  stop.  Yet,  even  so,  there  was  the  silence 
with  us  always ;  and  here  also  was  the  river  with  the 
name  that  must  for  ever  be  an  awful  name  to  many, 
the  river  Somme.  Nesle  followed  Ham  fairly  soon. 
We  made  those  nine  kilometres  evenly,  and  again  I 
was  glad  to  count  them  off.  I  was  watching  the  day- 
light rather  than  what  more  it  showed  us  of  destruc- 
tion, and  I  was  watching  the  road.  On  my  knees  lay 
the  map  open,  and  the  chauffeur  had  at  length  been 
reduced  to  believing  what  I  said.  I  had  by  now  de- 
livered a  number  of  directions  to  him,  all  of  which 
had  come  true.     At  every  cross-roads,  or  fork,  or 


66 


NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 


turn,  he  would  submissively  slow  down  and  listen,  and 
then  obey  me  as  I  barked  to  him,  ''Right"  or  "Left" 
or ' '  Straight  on. ' '  The  light  waned  and  I  looked  at  it 
and  at  my  watch  and  at  the  map  wherever  I  could 
see  the  kilometres  of  devastation  which  lay  ahead  of 
us  still.  I  could  read  which  turns  we  were  to  take, 
but  the  time  was  coming  very  soon  when  I  should  be 
able  to  read  them  no  longer.  I  wondered  what  we 
should  all  do  in  the  dark.  Many  ridges  and  descents 
and  roads  unknown  lay  between  us  and  Amiens.  "We 
had  nothing  with  us  in  the  way  of  food  or  covering, 
and  no  desert  could  promise  less  of  either  than  this 
silent  land  of  the  Somme.  The  last  sight  that  we  saw 
clearly  was  the  motionless  sadness  of  Chaulnes.  The 
grey  dusk  was  coming  down  upon  its  fragments.  We 
could  make  them  out,  thin  shapes  rising  from  a  blur 
of  mounds  and  undergrowth,  and  behind  and  among 
them,  grey,  stark  trees,  all  dead.  More  trees  rose 
beyond,  a  wood  of  them,  crooked,  splintered,  and 
dead.  No  sight  that  day  had  conveyed  so  much  the 
immovable  chill  of  extinction. 

We  left  grey,  quiet  Chaulnes  behind  us,  and  came 
to  a  fork  which  might  be  so  important  that  I  made  the 
chauffeur  stop.  Coming  towards  us  along  a  smooth- 
looking  way  for  which  I  yearned,  was  a  camion.  In 
my  hesitation,  my  faith  wavered,  and  I  asked  the 
driver  how  to  go  to  Amiens.  To  the  right,  he  an- 
swered, and  was  gone.  It  was  wrong.  The  way  he 
had  come,  to  the  left,  was  the  one. 

Dark  was  now  treading  on  our  heels.  We  crossed 
without  due  circumspection  a  single  railroad  track 
that  jutted  rather  high  and  abrupt,  bounced  with  a 
forlorn  inward  clink  of  snapping,  and  stood  still. 
Various  urgings  and  motions  made  by  the  chauffeur 


THE   FRAGMENTS   THAT   EEMAIN     67 

brought  no  response  from  the  impassive  car.  He  got 
down  and  opened  it.  Something  was  broken.  He 
told  me  its  French  name.  Was  it  fataH  I  asked  him, 
and  he  assured  me  that  in  time  he  could  mend  it.  I 
did  not  in  the  least  believe  him;  why  should  I?  It  is 
better  in  such  cases  to  assume  the  worst  and  see  what 
else  can  be  done.  My  friend  and  I  walked  about 
while  the  figure  of  the  stooping  chauffeur  grew  more 
dim  in  the  departing  light.  We  did  not  seem  to  be 
anywhere,  there  did  not  seem  to  be  anything  to  do. 
We  had  come  to  grief  exactly  beside  a  little  estaminet, 
dark  and  closed,  the  glass  gone  from  its  window  and 
blind  boards  there  instead.  It  stood  where  the  road 
and  the  railway  crossed  each  other.  I  paced  several 
times  in  front  of  its  silent  door  and  pictured  us  all 
breaking  into  it  presently  when  the  night  should  have 
completely  fallen  and  the  chauffeur  completely  failed 
to  restore  the  engine  to  life.  Even  if  it  should  prove 
entirely  empty,  the  floor  of  it  would  be  larger  to  sleep 
in  than  the  car,  and  smaller  than  the  wide  world. 
What  difference  would  it  make,  anyhow,  such  a  small 
mishap  in  the  presence  of  such  great  calamity?  Then 
I  heard  a  sound  inside,  and  spoke  to  the  sound  ap- 
pealingly  and  reassuringly.  The  door  was  opened 
with  caution  and  there  stood  a  woman.  Her  face  was 
pleasant  and  it  was  with  a  pleasant  and  gentle  voice 
that  she  greeted  me.  I  could  not  tell  her  age,  she  had 
seen  war:  Young  and  old  who  have  gazed  under- 
standing^ upon  the  full  countenance  of  war  become 
of  like  age.  A  gash,  recent  and  not  half  healed, 
crossed  her  forehead.  She  glanced  at  us  and  our  car, 
took  in  the  mishap,  and  bade  us  enter  with  words  of 
very  sweet  apology : 
"You  see  how  we  are  installed." 


68  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

The  light  of  one  dull  lamp  was  quite  enough  to 
disclose  the  state  of  this  home.  I  suppose  that  there 
had  been  a  fire  in  something,  for  she  must  have 
cooked  somewhere,  but  I  saw  none.  The  room  was 
damp  and  cold.  Beside  the  boarded  window  which  I 
had  seen  in  front  were  others  with  neither  boards  nor 
glass  in  them,  open  holes  into  the  night.  Still,  the 
place  had  a  roof,  and  it  was  the  first  edifice  of  any- 
kind  which  we  had  during  many  hours  an  opportunity 
to  see  that  was  not  a  total  wreck. 

"We  have  just  come  back  to  it,"  she  said. 

Who  "we"  were  I  did  not  ask  her,  but  presently 
learned  without  any  asking.  She  and  her  husband 
had  come  back  from  Normandy  where  they  had  been 
for  a  year  in  refuge.  She  had  lost  everything.  She 
told  us  of  her  fortunes  simply  and  sweetly  and  every 
syllable  was  full  of  perfect,  unforced  courage.  They 
would  get  on ;  the  estaminet  was  on  the  road  where 
people  passed  and  they  would  be  passing  more  and 
more  as  times  revived.  While  she  told  us  of  her 
prospects,  heavy  coughing  broke  out  somewhere. 

"Your  husband?"  I  asked  her. 

"Yes." 

"I  hope  that  he  is  not  ill?" 

"But  not  at  all,  monsieur.  It  is  nothing.  He 
went  out  with  friends  today,  and  there  it  is.  It's  but 
that." 

"I  hope  he  doesn't  do  it  often?" 

"Oh,  no!"  she  assured  me  with  a  gay  smile  as  I 
looked  at  the  gash  in  her  forehead. 

Directly  he  coughed  violently  and  she  hastened  to 
him  in  some  hole  behind  the  room.  Some  turn  that 
I  now  made  disclosed  to  me  that  what  I  had  taken 
for  a  huddle  of  bedding  lying  across  some  article  of 


THE   FRAGMENTS    THAT   REMAIN      69 

furniture  was  a  perambulator  with  a  baby  asleep 
in  it. 

"He'll  be  better  now,"  said  the  mother,  coming 
back  to  us  from  the  father.  Then  she  showed  her 
placid  child  to  us. 

She  had  a  loaf  of  coarse  bread  and  some  butter 
which  made  our  dinner ;  she  wanted  but  ' '  six  sous ' ' 
for  it.  We  took  the  chauffeur 's  share  outside  to  him, 
where  he  labored  at  the  engine.  It  was  now  entirely 
dark.  She  had  a  bed  and  we  could  have  stayed  there, 
but  as  Ave  were  considering  this  the  chauffeur  came 
in  to  ask  for  water  and  told  us  that  the  car  would  go. 
She  had  water  there  in  a  bucket  which  she  gave  him. 
No  water  was  near  the  estaminet,  the  nearest  was  at 
about  a  kilometre's  distance,  whence  she  fetched  it 
each  day.  We  gave  her  some  francs  for  the  water, 
and  some  others  in  the  name  of  the  child  in  the  per- 
ambulator. She  did  not  wish  to  take  them.  She  pro- 
tested. There  was  nothing  in  her  face  or  voice  of 
hard  luck.  She  seemed  strangely  refined  for  that 
estaminet,  her  smile  rode  over  her  adversity,  she  was 
a  French  woman,  perfectly  game  in  the  true  French 
way. 

Our  misadventures  in  wrong  roads  might  have  dis- 
couraged my  asking  any  more  directions  from  the 
local-minded  natives,  had  there  been  any  other  choice 
save  to  go  blindly  on.  The  camion  driver  had  sent  us 
off  the  broad  plain  way  into  a  perfect  nest  of  local 
lanes  which  my  map  showed  now  by  the  light  of  the 
smoky  lamp.  We  were  close  to  a  little  place  called 
Harbonnieres,  in  sight  of  it,  really,  had  there  been 
anything  now  to  see  except  the  darkness.  But 
whether  to  go  forward  or  back,  and  which  turns  to 
take  if  we  did  either  one  or  the  other,  who  of  us  could 


70  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

say?  Least  of  all  that  chauffeur.  To  go  blindly  on 
with  him  and  a  mended  car  did  not  appeal  to  me,  and 
so  once  more  I  inquired  the  way  of  a  native. 

"Go  through  the  pays,"  she  said  (the  pays  was 
the  little  village  of  Harbonnieres)  "and  at  the  church 
turn  to  the  right,  and  go  two  kilometres,  and  turn 
to  the  left  on  the  grande  route  to  Amiens."  Today 
I  know  that  it  is  from  the  women,  not  the  men,  that 
you  will  be  directed  right. 

Thus  we  left  her,  and  her  estaminet,  and  her  sleep- 
ing baby,  and  her  husband  who  had  spent  the  day 
with  friends,  while  she  fetched  the  water  from  Har- 
bonnieres. 

There  was  no  map  any  more.  Its  work  was  done. 
We  sat  back  in  the  car  and  heard  its  noise  as  we  went 
along.  We  could  see  nothing  of  the  land,  but  when 
objects  came  close  we  could  make  out  their  general 
shapes.  We  went  through  the  dark  ruins  of  village 
after  village.  Here  and  there  some  window  would 
dimly  shine  and  pass.  Along  the  road  we  met  a  two- 
wheeled  cart  now  and  then,  and  sometimes  some 
soldiers.  We  did  not  know  Villers-Bretonneux  when 
we  came  to  it,  or  any  other  place,  but  we  knew  when 
we  had  passed  out  of  the  slaughtered  region.  Once 
more  the  signs  of  natural  existence  looked  strange. 
Soon  after  these  began  we  entered  Amiens,  and  at  a 
quarter  past  ten  we  got  out  at  the  Hotel  du  Rhin. 

This  day  did  not  merely  double  the  knowledge 
which  had  begun  at  Compiegne  yesterday;  it  changed 
what  I  knew  from  what  had  been  like  a  plane  into 
something  that  was  like  a  cube.  In  its  depths  were 
the  French  and  the  British  soul,  shining  like  the 
battlements  of  light  against  the  powers  of  darkness. 
Its  surface  was  the  stricken  fields  of  France,  fields 


THE  FRAGMENTS  THAT  EEMAIN  71 

of  life  five  years  ago,  fields  of  the  great  silence  now : 
The  fallen  shapes  of  towns,  the  disembowelled  soil, 
the  shells  and  the  wire  where  the  wheat  had  been,  the 
crosses  everywhere  to  the  horizon,  the  exiled  French 
groping  for  their  cellars,  the  strange  languages  and 
races  swarming  upon  the  French  earth,  our  jaunty 
doughboys,  the  British  Tommies,  the  German  prison- 
ers, and  the  Chinese  coolies  digging  up  the  rotting 
dead;  amid  this,  the  tranquil,  unharmed  cathedral 
at  Amiens,  and  far  away  across  more  distances  of  the 
great  silence,  the  battered  cathedral  at  Reims,  both 
rising  high  above  this  wide,  sad  grave  of  men  and 
things. 


VII 

SOME  PEACE  CONFEKENCES 

I  had  gone  out  of  the  beaten  way  to  listen  to  a  comic 
opera,  an  old  comic  opera  that  had  been  young  in  the 
days  of  my  own  youth.  I  had  dined  early  and  sought 
the  Trianon  Lyrique  in  time  for  a  good  seat  in  the 
second  row,  and  for  all  the  preliminaries.  I  like  to 
see  the  musicians  file  in  one  by  one  from  the  hole 
under  the  stage,  and  take  their  places,  and  turn  up 
the  lights  over  their  desks,  and  spread  out  their 
sheets  of  music,  and  put  their  respective  instruments 
to  their  chins  or  their  lips  or  between  their  knees,  and 
get  in  tune  and  begin  tootling  over  little  scraps  of 
what  is  coming,  until  the  whole  hive  of  fiddles  and 
flutes  and  curving  tubes  is  buzzing.  Well,  they 
hadn't  appeared  when  I  sat  down ;  nor  had  the  public. 
A  few  early  birds  like  myself,  quiet  French  birds  with 
very  quiet  plumage,  dotted  the  spaces.  It  was  a 
"family  theatre,"  the  ouvreuse  reminded  me,  where 
innocence  could  come  with  its  father  and  mother,  and 
sustain  no  harm.  I  gave  the  ouvreuse  a  whole  franc 
for  telling  me  this  and  showing  me  my  seat  and  trying 
to  take  charge  of  my  overcoat.  I  felt  suddenly  re- 
laxed and  happy  to  have  escaped  from  the  present 
into  this  sanctuary  of  the  past,  safe  from  the  noises 
of  the  restless  hour,  far  from  the  discords  of  peace. 
The  Trianon  Lyrique  stood  in  a  back-water,  a  little 
bay  of  true  Paris,  untroubled  by  the  chop-sea  of  sol- 
diers, envoys,  correspondents,  negotiators,  diplomats, 

72 


SOME    PEACE    CONFERENCES  73 

experts,  intriguers,  prime  ministers,  philanthropists, 
and  flags  and  rags  of  all  nations,  which  the  hurri- 
canes of  negotiation  had  driven  to  toss  and  beat  upon 
the  wider  spaces  of  the  city.  Thus  I  sat  waiting 
placidly,  and  held  a  little  conference,  a  true  Peace 
Conference,  with  myself  and  my  memories.  These 
jostled  and  needed  arranging. 

Amiens  and  the  Somme  lay  behind  me,  with  the  re- 
mainder of  my  pilgrimage  to  desolation  still  ahead. 
Between  them  was  this  Parisian  parenthesis.  At 
dinner  the  last  night  at  Amiens,  an  officer,  a  major 
in  the  British  service,  had  sat  with  us  and  told  us 
that  he  had  seen  women  flying  from  village  to  village 
with  dead  babies  and  household  chattels  huddled 
under  their  arms ;  and  had  seen  a  child  whose  hands 
the  Huns  had  compelled  its  own  father  to  cut  off. 
I  was  glad  to  have  the  Paris  parenthesis,  to  see  the 
shops,  the  streets,  the  living  life,  and  to  hear  the 
home  voices  of  our  soldiers.  These  were  everywhere 
in  the  streets  and  shops  of  Paris  in  April  and  May, 
1919 ;  Paris  with  a  jungle  of  captured  German  guns, 
thickly  lacing  the  Place  de  la  Concorde,  bordering 
the  wide  way  from  it  to  the  Arc  de  Triomphe ;  Paris 
with  American  cars  and  American  soldier  chauffeurs 
clotting  the  space  in  front  of  the  transfigured  Hotel 
de  Crillon,  waiting  the  pleasure  of  the  envoys,  ex- 
perts, philanthropists,  and  secretaries  who  sat  within 
and  seethed  without ;  and  Paris,  this  chop-sea  of  spy- 
ing, distrusting  sharks  swum  hither  from  all  waters, 
afloat  with  the  American  soldier.  You  could  look 
nowhere  and  not  see  him.  He  swarmed  above  the 
ground  on  the  tops  of  omnibuses,  on  the  ground  in 
shops  and  along  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  and  underground 
in  the  trains  of  the  Metro.     The  sharks  swam  in 


74 


NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 


waters  congenial ;  not  he.    I  have  heard  a  verse  about 
him: 

Although  he  was  on  pleasure  bent, 

He  had  no  frugal  mind; 
He  did  not  care  how  much  he  spent, 

He  was  not  in  his  element, 
And  he  was  very  innocent, 

And  very  much  too  kind. 


Whatever  rioting  he  made  it  was  a  drop  in  the 
bucket  of  his  decency.  Saint  he  never  pretended  to 
be,  though  he  was  commendably  nearer  to  it  before 
than  after  the  loosening  influence  of  the  Armistice. 
Yet  no  matter  how  he  spent  his  Paris  nights,  he  was 
a  clean,  irrelevant  creature  for  Paris  to  entertain; 
a  spirit  how  uncooked  amid  this  spiced  stew  of  the 
jaded  Old  World !  Uprooted  by  a  convulsion,  not  of 
nature  but  of  human  nature,  and  flung  into  a  soil  and 
climate  where  nothing  like  him  grew,  he  stuck  out 
strangely  from  the  general  mess ;  and  his  figure  will 
remain  with  me,  buoyant,  youthful,  detached,  the 
most  far-fetched  apparition  I  have  ever  seen  thrust 
into  a  human  picture. 

He  felt  this.  He  knew  it.  Those  of  him  who  had 
come  over  too  late  to  kill  Huns,  felt  it  doubly.  Gen- 
erally he  hated  the  French,  generally  he  wanted  to 
go  home,  and  generally — whenever  I  rubbed  shoul- 
ders with  him  in  streets  or  shops  or  trains  long 
enough  for  any  conversation — I  reasoned  with  him. 
Two  sentences  from  an  enlisted  man  at  Fort  Ogle- 
thorpe sum  up  what  our  army  felt.  He  was  a  young 
master-carpenter  who  had  left  his  work,  his  wife, 
and  two  children. 

"You'll  be  anxious  to  get  back?" 


SOME    PEACE    CONFERENCES  75 

"Not  till  it's  over.  Then  home  as  quick  as  I  can 
get." 

That  is  why  they  went:  to  see  it  through,  to  kill 
Huns,  to  stop  the  world  crime;  not  for  the  sake  of 
any  academic  generalizations  about  democracy.  Our 
own  danger  had  not  dawned  upon  them. 

I  did  not  want  our  soldiers  to  go  home  hating  the 
French.  Without  the  light  that  France  has  thrown 
round  the  world,  how  dim  the  world  would  be !  But 
nothing  of  this  would  go  far  to  placate  the  sore  and 
home-sick  doughboy.  It  would  be  "highbrow  stuff " 
to  him.  He  had  his  reasons  for  hating  the  French, 
and  they  were  good  ones,  too.  The  flaws  in  the 
French  character  were  the  very  flaws  to  displease 
him.  The  French  set  too  little  store  by  the  mechan- 
ical conveniences  of  life,  such  as  plumbing  and  elec- 
tric lights ;  he  set  too  much.  He  had  too  little  respect 
for  thrift  and  tradition;  the  French  had  too  much. 
He  could  be  gay  and  sociable,  evening  after  evening, 
exclusively  in  men's  company.  The  French  astonish- 
ment at  this  estranged  him  whenever  he  happened  to 
find  it  out.  He  continually  washed  and  shaved  him- 
self clean ;  he  spent  his  money  lavishly.  These  were 
less  frequent  habits  in  the  land  whence  he  had  helped 
to  expel  the  Huns.  And  now  these  French,  after 
flinging  their  arms  round  him  while  the  Huns  were 
walking  on  to  Paris,  were  asking  him  when  he  was 
going  home.  He  made  his  English  plain,  too  plain 
for  print  sometimes.  As  if  he  wanted  to  stay  in  their 
damned,  dirty,  stingy  country  of  robbers!  These 
small-change  frogs  called  Americans  "dollar-chas- 
ers." Why  the  whole  of  Europe  was  chasing  dollars 
with  its  tongue  hanging  out  of  its  mouth.  Only, 
when  it  caught  one  it  held  on.    When  an  American 


76  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"treated,"  they  called  him  vulgar.  Well,  no  frog 
was  guilty  of  that  vulgarity,  anyhow. 

The  doughboy  needed  no  official  voices,  French  or 
English,  to  tell  him  what  he  had  done.  He  might 
be  foolish  and  boast,  or  he  might  not ;  but  quite  inde- 
pendent of  recognition  from  on  high,  or  tinkling  sym- 
bols pinned  on  his  chest,  he  knew  in  his  heart  that 
in  the  darkest  hour  of  1918,  he  had  tipped  the  scales 
to  victory;  that  without  his  presence  upon  the  fields 
allotted  to  him,  the  British  could  not  have  made  their 
magnificent  advance  over  the  fields  allotted  to  them ; 
that  without  his  presence  in  France,  the  Huns  would 
still  be  present  in  France.  He  knew  all  this  because 
our  American  mind,  if  raw,  is  clear  and  just.  And 
now  they  were  anxious  to  get  rid  of  him,  which  was 
natural ;  and  letting  him  know  it,  which  was  not  tres 
gentil.  "Tray  jontee"  was  the  phrase  employed  in 
this  connection  by  one  ironic  doughboy,  who,  being 
obviously  a  charmer,  had  also  made  substantial  con- 
quests among  the  French  idioms.  "Stinking"  was 
the  word  given  it  by  another  doughboy,  plainer 
spoken. 

"How  many  words  of  French  do  you  know?" 
This  was  my  usual  device  for  entering  upon  talk 
with  them. 

"About  six,"  was  their  not  unusual  answer.  They 
would  turn  at  my  question,  and  look  at  me  with  an 
American's  grin  for  a  brother  American. 

Sometimes  in  shops  I  computed,  at  their  own  re- 
quest, the  sum  of  their  purchases,  and  the  change 
properly  due.  The  doughboy  who  had  said  "stink- 
ing" had  walked  out  of  a  photograph  shop  with  me 
and  opened  his  heart  to  me  along  under  the  arcades 
of  the  Rue  de  Rivoli.     Concerning  the  French,  he 


SOME    PEACE    CONFERENCES  77 

knew  his  mind  in  his  American  way,  down  to  the 
ground. 

"Do  you  think,"  he  demanded,  "if  they  had  come 
over  and  saved  New  York  and  Bridgeport  and  New 
Haven  for  us,  we'd  be  showing  them  the  door  like 
they  're  showing  it  to  us  f " 

"They  saved  New  York  and  Bridgeport  without 
coming  over, ' '  I  answered. 

"So  they've  told  me  more  than  once,  since  the 
Armistice.  I'll  call  it  a  good  guess.  Maybe  they  did. 
But  they  saved  us  in  their  own  country,  kind  of  un- 
consciously. On  the  side,  as  it  were.  There's  a  dif- 
ference, don't  you  think?  About  three  thousand 
miles'  difference,  according  to  the  lowest  figure  I 
can  make  it." 

"You  must  make  allowances "  I  began,  rather 

feebly ;  for  I  saw  his  side  of  it  full  as  well  as  he  did. 

"Allowances!  I've  allowed  all  the  allowances  my 
mind  will  allow  me  to  allow.  Good  night !  If  they 
were  sitting  around  in  New  Jersey  and  Connecticut 
after  an  armistice  fixed  up  at  Hoboken,  do  you  think 
we'd  be  trying  to  push  'em  into  the  Atlantic,  or  do 
you  think  we'd  be  setting  up  the  drinks?" 

'We're  different,"  I  said.  I  was  still  feeble. 
'"Well,  I  guess  we  are  different.  And  if  it  comes  to 
politeness,  give  me  the  American  brand  yesterday, 
today,  and  for  ever.  Too  much  dictionary  about  the 
French  article  and  not  enough  goods  delivered.  All 
froth  and  no  kick  to  it.  Tray  biang  apray  voo  mais 
wee  certaynmong  meel  pardong  meel  remaircimong. 
Oh,  hell !  And  say — if  your  house  was  afire,  and  you 
pretty  nearly  all  in  fighting  it,  and  your  neighbor  saw 
it  and  came  across  the  fields  and  jumped  in  and 
helped  put  it  out,  you'd  be  likely  to  send  him  a  bill 


78  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

for  a  pitcher  he'd  broken  and  some  corn  he'd  trod 
down,  wouldn  't  yon  % ' ' 

"Come  and  eat  lunch  with  me,"  I  said.  "It's  one 
o  'clock. ' ' 

He  stood  pondering.  In  the  course  of  our  talk  we 
had  reached  and  gone  some  distance  along  the  Rue 
Boissy  d'Anglas,  in  the  direction  of  my  hotel. 

"I  guess  I  can  eat  something  now."  As  he  came 
out  with  this,  he  looked  me  in  the  eyes  with  a  con- 
fessing smile. 

"Too  much  joy  last  night?"  I  asked,  smiling  also. 

"Yep." 

"No  breakfast  yet?" 

"No."    He  gave  an  expressive  shudder. 

At  the  cafe  I  chose  (where  he  tried  his  best  to  pay 
for  something)  I  laid  before  him  the  French  case.  I 
preached  to  him  the  good  old  doctrine  of  bear  and 
forbear.  I  was  growing  practiced;  he  listened.  He 
was  another  perfect  instance  of  the  American  mind, 
clear  and  just,  once  the  facts  are  laid  before  it  hon- 
estly. I  did  not  completely  bring  him  round,  but  he 
was  going  to  reach  conclusions  after  we  had  parted 
which  would  be  more  lenient  than  those  he  held  when 
we  met. 

"All  the  same,"  he  said,  "once  I  get  back  to  Dan- 
bury — never  again!"    That  was  his  final  word. 

Certain  things  I  withheld  from  him  as  I  did  from 
all  of  them:  worse  things  that  few  of  them  knew. 
These  needed  much  bear  and  forbear — more  than  I 
was  up  to  at  times  myself.  This  weather-cock  busi- 
ness was  not  confined  to  the  classes  with  whom  the 
soldiers  mixed.  There  was  a  change  of  wind  higher 
up.  The  warm  blasts  which  had  greeted  our  entrance 
into  the  war  and  our  landing  upon  French  soil  had 


SOME   PEACE    CONFERENCES  79 

begun  instantly  to  veer  and  chill  after  the  Armistice. 
We  Americans  were  no  longer  Mayflowers  and  La- 
fayettes  come  back  to  our  dear  old  home.  Upon  the 
laurels  which  they  had  piled  somewhat  too  thick 
around  our  brows  when  first  we  stepped  ashore,  more 
mud  was  being  cast  as  each  elapsing  month  pushed 
Chateau-Thierry  farther  back  into  the  safe  past. 
From  certain  quarters  of  authority  the  word  had 
gone  forth  to  tone  down  our  contribution  to  victory 
now  that  the  trick  was  done.  A  little  adroit  French 
phrase  had  been  picked  out  and  passed  round  from 
inner  circles  outward :  we  had  given  the  Allies  a  coup 
d'epaule.  "Leg  up"  is  the  English  for  that.  Papa 
Joffre,  who  staunchly  insisted  that  "leg  up"  fell 
somewhat  short  of  describing  our  part  at  Chateau- 
Thierry  and  Champagne  and  St.  Mihiel  and  the  Ar- 
gonne,  and  two  million  men  come  three  thousand 
miles,  and  successful  fighting  that  extended  from 
early  summer  to  the  11th  of  November — Papa  Joffre, 
who  stuck  out  for  it  that  this  represented  something 
more  than  a  "leg  up,"  had  been  officially  "canned," 
as  our  doughboys  would  have  put  it.  I  reflected  upon 
this,  and  upon  the  fact  that  the  French,  with  the  same 
breath  that  they  called  us  a  "leg  up,"  were  anxious 
that  we  should  bind  ourselves  to  come  over  and  boost 
them  again,  if  ever  the  Germans  again  started  up. 
I  had  discerned  in  some  persons  a  subtle  disap- 
pointment at  our  proving  ourselves  not  too  proud  to 
fight;  it  compelled  them  to  seek  something  else  to 
fling.  I  had  noticed  that  certain  English  jeers  at  our 
neutrality  had  shifted  to  jealousy  of  our  participa- 
tion; a  cold  glaze  had  filled  certain  English  eyes  at 
the  barest  reference  to  our  battles.  To  a  friend  of 
mine  one  English  lady  had  complained  that  just  as 


80  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

the  Allies  were  on  the  threshold  of  winning  we  had 
come  over  and  robbed  them  of  the  full  glory  of 
victory.  Were  such  undercurrents  to  direct  the  great 
stream  of  History  1  Or  would  the  brag  upon  our  part 
die  away  beside  the  vast  fight  and  suffering  of  France 
and  England,  and  their  sneers  vanish  in  the  realiza- 
tion that  in  joining  them  we  had  wrenched  ourselves 
from  one  of  the  deepest-rooted  articles  of  our  faith, 
and  asked  nothing? 

Meanwhile,  these  countries  were  teaching  full  as 
much  of  forbearance  to  me  as  they  could  learn  from 
mine.  At  moments  it  came  hard,  but  I  held  to  it,  even 
when  I  heard  that  we  had  come  to  make  the  world 
safe  for  hypocrisy;  reaction  inevitable  and  petulant 
must  be  met  philosophically.  Only,  not  all  of  our 
doughboys  were  philosophers ;  my  next  effort  at  per- 
suasion was  not  crowned  with  visible  success. 

It  began  in  the  Metro.  A  crowd  filled  the  car,  and 
I  was  glad  to  feel  pretty  sure  that  the  remarks  which 
some  of  my  fellow-countrymen  were  making  fell  upon 
ears  that  did  not  understand  them.  The  noise  of  the 
train  in  the  tunnel  led  me  to  move  nearer  to  hear  the 
whole  instead  of  parts  of  what  was  being  said,  as  the 
chief  word  which  reached  me  was,  as  usual,  "frogs." 
But  as  I  made  my  way,  over  my  shoulder  came  the 
muttered  phrase,  "ces  sales  Americains."  Some 
Frenchman  was  present  who  did  at  any  rate  under- 
stand what  frogs  meant  and  he  was  returning  the 
compliment;  and  not  much  league  of  nations  was 
occurring  here. 

It  was  four  doughboys  comparing  recent  Parisian 
experiences  together  quite  placidly,  and  planning  ex- 
periences to  come.  They  were  not  complaining,  as  I 
had  supposed  at  first;  indeed,  their  adventures  had 


if 


SOME   PEACE    CONFERENCES  81 

been  wholly  to  their  satisfaction,  and  to  these  they 
referred  with  a  frankness  based  upon  the  assumption 
that  nobody  else  knew  English. 

"Made  me  think  of  one  night  in  Tucson, "  said  one. 

"Naw,  they're  not  the  same,"  said  another. 
"Mexican  girls  can  really  love  you." 

"Oh,  say,  boys,"  said  a  third,  "he's  learned  what 
true  love  is ! "    And  they  all  laughed  joyously. 

"Say,  we  got  to  change  at  Concorde!"  exclaimed 
the  second,  with  sudden  alarm. 

"Well,  tell  us  something  we  don't  know,"  said  Tuc- 
son.   "More  about  true  love." 

'Well,  we  don't  want  to  pass  Concorde." 
;I'll  not  let  you,"  said  I.     "I'm  changing  there 
myself." 

In  Paris  it  seemed  invariably  to  startle  them 
slightly  when  anybody  who  wasn't  a  doughboy  wasn't 
French. 

"Is  the  hotel  St.  Xavier  still  the  best  in  Tucson ?" 
I  inquired. 

They  began  to  grin,  especially  a  tall  one,  and  one 
with  black  hair.  Tucson  was  short  and  slim,  with  a 
merry  eye. 

"I  expect,"  I  pursued,  "that  the  right  man  could 
find  true  love  in  Deming,  Lordsburg,  Benson,  Mari- 
copa, Phoenix  and  Tempe,  even  Yuma,  just  as  well 
as  in  Tucson." 

My  "even  Yuma,"  was  an  enormous  success;  they 
drove  their  elbows  into  each  other,  although  two  of 
them  had  blushed  deeply  at  being  overheard.  By  the 
time  we  were  getting  out  at  Concorde,  blushes  had 
been  recovered  from,  they  had  learned  that  I  had 
ridden  over  Arizona  and  New  Mexico  before  they 
were  born,  and  I  had  learned  that  the  hotel  St.  Xavier 


82 


NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 


was  no  longer  the  best  in  Tucson.  When  I  asked 
young  Tucson  if  the  big  wild  cat  I  had  seen  in  Mari- 
copa in  1910  was  still  there,  he  began,  I  think,  to  feel 
as  if  I  must  be  something  in  the  way  of  a  long-lost 
uncle ;  he  had  seen  that  cat  when  he  was  a  boy. 

"Mr.  Williams  owned  it,"  said  he.  "Acrosst  over 
the  track.  We  lived  on  Salt  River  then.  Excuse  me, 
sir,  but  I  'd  never  take  you  for  an  American. ' ' 

"I'll  try  to  excuse  you.  I  should  always  know 
you  were  one.  Let  me  congratulate  you  on  your 
division's  athletic  fame." 

"We  fought  some  too,  sir." 

1 '  Oh,  all  good  Americans  are  proud  of  that.  Where 
are  you  getting  out?" 

"Marbcef.  Gosh,  I  wish  I  could  get  out  of  this 
country. ' ' 

"Marbcef 's  mine."  It  was  not,  I  had  been  getting 
out  at  Alma,  but  his  exclamation  had  put  the  mis- 
sionary spirit  in  me.  Time  happened  to  be  nothing, 
and  we  had  begun  well. 

"Why  call  them  frogs?"  I  asked. 

"Do  you  like  them?"  This  was  Black  Hair,  after 
we  had  come  up  from  below  and  were  walking  along. 

"I  like  them  very  much." 

They  were  silent. 

"I  guess  we  don't,  sir,"  said  Tucson,  after  a  few 
steps  by  my  side. 

"I  can  give  very  good  reasons  for  liking  them," 
said  I. 

One  of  the  two  in  front  of  us  turned  around. 

"We  have  very  good  reasons  for  not,"  said  he. 
This  was  Tall  One. 

Somehow  it  was  slightly  portentous.  They  all 
stopped  and  faced  me,  and  there  stood  the  five  of  us 


SOME    PEACE    CONFERENCES  83 

in  an  argument  on  the  wide  walk  of  the  Champs  Ely- 
sees.  They  appealed,  they  confided,  as  to  a  friend, 
but  every  face  had  grown  hard  as  a  flint ;  they  took  up 
their  tale  in  cold  anger  and  grew  hot  over  it  at  the 
end. 

"You  know  the  St.  Mihiel  country?"  This  was 
Black  Hair. 

"Not  yet." 

"Well,  that's  where  our  big  lack  comes  in." 

' '  You  know  we  were  there  last  September  1 ' '  This 
was  Tall  One. 

"Oh,  yes." 

"Well,  that's  where  we  didn't  pay  for  the  privi- 
lege, ' '  said  Tall  One. 

"Privilege  of  fighting  for  France,"  said  Black 
Hair. 

"We  '11  fight  for  Germany  next  time.  We  know  the 
Germans  now.  They're  the  folks  to  treat  a  man 
well." 

"Very  well,"  amplified  Tucson.  "Very,  very 
well.  And  they're  clean.  Why,  look  here.  About  St. 
Mihiel.  We  had  orders  to  dig  in  at  a  place  there. 
Second  day." 

"Never  mind  the  day.  We  were  just  starting  to 
dig  in." 

"Lots  of  companies  were  advancing,"  continued 
Tucson,  "the  shells  were  coming  our  way  right 
then.", 

' '  German  shells,  you  understand.  Coming  heavy, ' ' 
said  Black  Hair. 

"When  up  runs  the  farmer,"  said  Tucson,  "and 
says  to  our  captain  we  can't  go  on  till  we've  paid 
for  his  land.  Then  some  argument,  and  then  some 
excitement,  but  our  captain  talks  quiet." 


84  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"Our  captain  he's  a  gentleman."  This  was  the 
fourth,  who  had  been  a  solemn  listener  until  now. 

"Yes.  A  gentleman,"  affirmed  Tall  One.  "When 
you  meet  a  commissioned  officer  you  don't  always 
meet  a  gentleman." 

"Even  so!"  said  Fourth  One,  still  solemn. 

"Well,  and  so  the  farmer  got  more  excited  and  the 
captain  got  more  quiet,  and  away  goes  the  farmer 
and  back  he  comes  with  a  French  officer.  'You  must 
pay, '  says  the  officer.    We  all  heard  him. ' ' 

"Even  so!"  said  the  fourth.    "Yea,  yea." 

"Shut  up,  Elmer,  for  God's  sake." 

"The  gentleman  don't  mind.  He's  been  a  sport. 
Yea,  yea."  And  Fourth  One  suddenly  gave  a  youp 
that  must  have  come  from  the  cattle  range.  I  now 
perceived  that  either  his  last  night  was  not  finished 
or  his  next  was  already  begun. 

"Consider  yourselves,  consider  my  grey  hairs, 
consider  the  Champs  Elysees,"  I  begged  him. 

For  a  moment  their  eyes  grew  merry,  and  then 
hardened,  and  Tall  One  took  it  up. 

' '  The  Frenchman  told  the  captain  we  must  pay  the 
farmer  for  spoiling  his  land.  The  shells  were  coming 
livelier  all  the  time,  so  the  captain  told  us  to  keep 
digging  and  I  guess  he  told  the  French  captain  it 
was  his  busy  day.  Anyhow  Froggy  said  'biang, 
biang,'  and  he  pulled  out  a  paper." 

"He  pulls  out  a  paper,"  said  Fourth  One. 

"Wrote  on  it  and  handed  it  to  the  captain,"  said 
Black  Hair.  "Wanted  the  captain  to  sign  that  we'd 
pay  for  the  land  afterwards." 

"How  about  that,  sir?"  said  Tucson. 
"But  the  captain,"  said  Tall  One,  "handed  that 
paper  back  to  the  French  officer/ 


)) 


SOME   PEACE    CONFERENCES  85 

" He  handed  it  back.    Yea,  yea!" 

"And  he  told  him,"  Tall  One  continued,  taking  no 
notice,  "that  he  had  no  orders  to  sign  anything;  he 
was  here  to  push  Huns  off  the  land,  not  to  pay  for  it. 
'If  you  give  me  any  trouble,'  he  said " 

'  *  Frog  had  threatened  to  bring  his  men  over.  They 
were  digging  in  themselves,"  said  Black  Hair. 

"The  captain  told  him  to  bring  his  men  over  and 
they'd  get  more  good  manners  shot  into  them  in  a 
fraction  of  a  second  than  they  might  otherwise  ac- 
quire in  a  lifetime,"  said  Tucson.  They  finished 
their  tale  in  short  turns,  almost  talking  at  once. 

"The  French  officer  said " 

"We  didn't  get  it  all,  but  he  and  his  men  were 
going  to  come  over " 

"To  make  us  pay  or  quit  digging." 

"He  and  the  farmer  went  away  over  to  where  the 
French  were  digging,  but  they  never  came  back." 

"Come  back  yourself,  sir,  to  God's  country.  Now 
that  the  Armistice  is  signed  these  French  will  be  glad 
to  tell  you  good-bye. ' ' 

Tucson  said  that,  and  now  I  took  my  turn. 

"That  French  officer,"  I  began,  "had  paid  that 
farmer  for  the  injury  to  the  land  his  own  soldiers 
were  doing." 

Their  eyes  never  left  my  face.  This  was  a  good 
sign,  but  a  bad  one  went  with  it.  They  never  once 
asked  me  a  question.  I  must  have  talked  three  or 
four  minutes  steadily  to  them  as  we  stood  in  the 
Champs  Elysees,  explaining  to  them  the  predicament 
of  the  French  peasants  and  the  method  of  meeting 
it  which  I  understood  that  the  French  Government 
had  been  forced  to  adopt,  and  then  I  came  to  an  end 
with  dead  silence  for  an  answer. 


86  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

" Better  go  back  to  God's  country,  sir,"  repeated 
Tucson,  smiling. 

"Even  so,"  said  Fourth  One. 

We  parted,  amicably  disagreeing.  No  arguments, 
only  time  and  reflection,  and  perhaps  not  even  these, 
would  change  their  minds. 

Waiting  in  the  Trianon  Lyrique  with  my  overcoat 
on — heavens,  how  cold  that  theatre  was ! — I  thought 
over  these  talks  with  our  doughboys  and  took  out  my 
notes  of  them.  Should  I  cut  them  out  at  home? 
Should  I  cut  out  the  coup  d'epaule  and  everything 
else  disagreeable?  If  I  did,  would  home  believe  the 
agreeable  things  I  should  tell?  With  the  cause  of 
France  hung  our  own,  and  our  future  welfare,  and 
our  enlightened  participation  in  the  welfare  of  the 
world. 


VIII 


LE   PETIT   DUC 


The  drop-curtain  and  decorations  of  the  Trianon 
Lyrique  well  befitted  a  " family  theatre";  innocence 
with  its  father  and  mother  could  gaze  at  these  also 
without  injury.  I  blessed  them.  They  ministered 
to  my  Peace  Conference,  perhaps  they  caused  it: 
Aurora  in  her  chariot,  golden  rays  her  background, 
winged  boys  her  companions,  festooning  garlands  at 
either  hand,  the  head  of  Pegasus  below,  like  a  trophy 
of  the  chase,  and  that  drop-curtain — really  a  dividing 
curtain — quiet  with  colors  like  a  faded  oriental  rug 
that  had  been  used  and  walked  on  and  not  cleaned 
lately.  I  blessed  it  as  I  would  a  rest-cure,  my  reason- 
ing rose  serene  out  of  the  chop-sea  in  which  I,  too, 
had  been  tossing.  The  French  audience  gathered, 
French  undisguised,  not  on  exhibition  for  the  benefit 
of  Americans  any  more  than  the  opera,  quiet  domes- 
tic parties,  out  for  an  evening's  highly  economical 
entertainment.  I  was  enjoying  the  sight  of  them 
when  the  seat  next  mine  was  filled  by  a  spectator 
more  exotic  in  that  dingy  atmosphere  than  even  my- 
self. A  woman,  a  lady — she  made  me  an  exactly 
right  bow  for  disturbing  me;  a  lady  plainly  by  her 
expression,  by  her  lines,  by  the  way  she  sat,  and  by 
her  perfectly  admirable  and  perfectly  quiet  clothes. 
"We  began  at  once  to  study  each  other  in  that  imper- 
ceptible way  which  is  invariably  perceived  by  both 
parties.    She  was  handsome.    All  of  forty-five  (you 

87 


88  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

will  be  disappointed),  probably  nearer  fifty.  She  had 
style  and  missed  elegance.  Obviously  forcible. 
Somebody.  A  look  of  giving  orders  and  having  it 
done.  Too  much  so.  Had  probably  been  in  war- 
work.  Yes,  probably  the  head  of  something  she  sup- 
ported with  a  large  bank  account.  I  would  bet  she 
had  secretaries.  Oh,  yes;  one  of  the  chop-sea  phil- 
anthropists with  a  mission.  Philanthropists  are  un- 
mistakable even  when  they  are  ladies.  I  had  seen  her 
type  down-stairs  and  up  at  the  Hotel  de  Crillon  but 
nothing  equal  to  her.  American.  New  York?  I  felt 
so.  Why  did  she  make  me  angry?  The  fiddlers  were 
coming  out  of  the  hole  now.  And  here  she  was,  by 
herself.  Of  course  she  was  American.  And  if  any 
man  presumed  and  spoke  to  her — why  he'd  get  it! 
In  my  mind  was  no  such  presumption.  Silence  was 
what  I  had  come  here  for,  and  isolation. 

"We  might  as  well  chat,"  she  said  to  me,  in  Eng- 
lish. "Don't  you  think  so?"  Deep,  assured,  entirely 
civilized  voice.    Eyebrows  too  heavy. 

"I'll  say  anything  you  like,"  I  responded  amiably. 

"You'll  say  nothing  I  don't." 

"I  was  sure  that  you  appreciated  me,"  I  mur- 
mured. 

She  turned  this  over  before  she  was  quite  satisfied 
with  it;  then  she  inquired,  "Have  you  been  here 
long?" 

I  took  out  my  watch.    "Sixteen  minutes,  I  think." 

"You  know  perfectly  well  that  I  mean,  have  you 
been  in  Paris  long?" 

"Perfectly  well.  My  coming  is  quite  recent." 
From  the  gentleness  of  my  voice  any  old  friend  would 
have  known  that  I  was  going  to  be  detestable. 

"I  wonder  if  I  know  your  name?"  she  said  next. 


LE    PETIT    DUC  89 

"Quite  unlikely.    I'm  not  from  New  York." 

This  she  also  turned  over.  "I  can't  seem  to  place 
you." 

"Ah,  don't  try!" 

"I  came  here  to  get  away  from — well,  from  all  that 
you  are  probably  mistaking  for  the  true  France,"  she 
now  explained  to  me. 

"So  did  I!"  I  exclaimed.  "Well,  that  is  spoiled 
for  both  of  us.    We  must  just  console  each  other." 

"I  am  apt  to  hear  of  people,"  she  stated,  con- 
sidering me.  "You're  certainly  not  Red  Cross.  You 
can't  be  in  the  Reconstruction?  OrNeuilly?  I  know 
them  all  there.  You're  surely  not  a  member  of  Con- 
gress? One  can  tell  them  as  far  as  one  can  see 
them." 

' '  Really  and  truly  I  'm  not  a  spy.    Give  me  up ! " 

"Well,  it  makes  no  difference.  I  hope  you  have 
realized  that  Paris  is  by  no  means  France?" 

Of  course  I  had.  I  had  realized  that  about  forty 
years  ago.  Why  couldn't  she  perceive  that  I  knew 
something  about  France  myself?  How  had  I  found 
my  way  here,  far  from  the  areas  of  Paris  got  up  for 
strangers,  and  the  spangled  shows  sung  and  danced 
for  Americans?  Her  importance  blocked  her  obser- 
vation. She  took  herself  for  granted  too  much,  and 
me  too  little.  You  will  not  think  highly  of  me.  I 
fell  apart,  and  my  lower  nature  spoke  for  me,  sep- 
arately. If  I  was  to  have  no  isolation  she  should 
have  no  satisfaction. 

"Do  tell  me  about  that,"  I  said. 

"You  see,"  she  forcibly  expounded,  "Paris, 
through  being  a  great  centre,  draws  and  develops  all 
the  worst  elements." 

"  Oh,  I  see.    Like  New  York. ' ' 


90  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"And  Americans  live  here  for  months  perfectly 
ignorant  of  the  true  France.  I  hope  you  intend  to 
visit  the  devastated  regions  before  you  go  home?" 

"Should  I  find  true  France  there?" 

"It's  everywhere,  of  course,  in  a  way.  But  in 
provincial  France — where  the  devastated  regions  are, 
you  understand — you  get  straight  at  it,  while  here 
you  have  to  sift  it  out,  and  that  takes  familiarity  with 
the  language. ' ' 

"  I  '11  certainly  go,  if  I  can. ' ' 

"It  requires  authorization,  of  course."  She 
stopped  and  considered  me  again.  ' '  One  obtains  that 
in  various  ways.  American  ignorance  of  Europe  is 
simply  appalling." 

"Worse  than  theirs  of  us?"  I  inquired. 

"There  is  much  less  of  us  to  know.  Our  impor- 
tance is  great,  but  it's  simple.  Knowing  Europe 
would  be  of  incalculable  advantage  to  us.  Europe  is 
very  complicated.  Each  nation  has  things  it  does 
better  than  we  do  them,  and  we're  so  ignorant  we 
don't  know  it.  And  then,  life  here!  Why  life  here 
compared  to  American  life  is  like  a  wedding-cake 
compared  to  dry  toast." 

That  last  was  rather  good.  Why  did  I  know  that 
she  had  tried  it  on  others  before  she  bestowed  it  on 

me? 

"The  doctors  pronounce  too  much  wedding-cake 

indigestible, ' '  I  said. 

She  looked  at  me  suddenly.  "I  wonder  if  you're 
writing  for  The  Saturday  Evening  Post?" 

"How  are  you  ever  going  to  instruct  me  if  you 
keep  on  guessing  so  hard?" 

But  she  now  said,  "Ssh.  People  may  want  to 
listen."    And  she  settled  herself. 


LE   PETIT   DUC  91 

I  was  very  glad  to  listen  to  the  slender,  sprightly 
overture,  in  which  each  tune  was  an  old  friend. 

"That  is  the  true  France,"  she  informed  me  when 
it  was  over.  "But  only  the  surface.  Americans 
suppose  it  is  the  whole.  Do  you  know  what  the  war 
has  cost  France?" 

She  couldn't  tell  me  then,  because  the  curtain  had 
divided  and  they  were  singing  the  opening  chorus. 
But  she  would  tell  me  between  the  acts.  She  was 
only  half  listening  to  the  opera.  She  was  busy  over 
me.  Whatever  her  mission  was,  I  had  become  a  part 
of  it  while  she  had  the  chance.  I  realized  that  she 
was  a  mine  of  explosive  information,  that  her  zealous 
days  were  spent  in  some  large,  good  work,  that  she 
hooked  everybody,  every  likely  person,  every  passing 
listener  of  the  slightest  promise.  Thus  she  scattered 
the  seed  of  her  cause.  It  so  filled  her  that  no  place 
was  unpropitious,  no  time  untimely,  each  new  contact 
caused  her  statistics  to  burst  out  of  her.  Would  she 
bring  herself  in?  I  wondered.  The  act  went  on. 
The  little  bride  was  torn  from  the  little  bridegroom 
directly  after  their  wedding  ceremony,  and  hurried 
away  to  a  convent,  while  he  was  forced  to  continue 
his  education  with  his  two  tutors.  All  in  the  costume 
of  a  bygone  Watteau  age,  to  graceful  bygone  melodies 
and  rhythms. 

"Paris  cherishes  these  little  gems,"  she  informed 
me  as  the  curtain  closed.  ' '  They  are  extinct  with  us, 
because  the  audience  that  used  to  understand  them  is 
extinct.  They  demand  on  the  part  of  their  hearers 
the  rudiments  of  both  education  and  civilization. 
They  would  be  Greek  to  Hebrew  Broadway.  Not 
even  Big  Bertha  stopped  the  theatres.     The  actors 


92  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 


showed  that  they  were  as  true  sons  of  France  as  the 
foilus." 

She  was  going  to  hammer  me  with  facts  like  a  pile- 
driver  ;  that  I  saw  in  a  flash.  It  would  go  on  through 
the  whole  intermission;  and  intermissions  in  Paris 
are  long.  When  they  have  bought  seats  for  the 
theatre,  the  economic  French  put  out  the  lamps  and 
the  fire  at  home,  and  feel  entitled  to  lodging  at  the 
play  until  near  midnight.  That  was  another  good 
sentence  about  Greek  to  Hebrew  Broadway. 

"I  have  read  about  the  brave  patriotism  of  the 
French  actors,"  I  said. 

You  could  seldom  tell  whether  she  was  listening  to 
you  or  not.  Whatever  she  had  been  in  her  youth,  she 
now  belonged  to  that  class  of  important  people  who 
hear  nothing  you  say  except  what  happens  to  strike 
the  keynote  of  their  own  preoccupation. 

"  Everything  is  needed  here,"  she  now  declared. 
1 1 Everywhere  you  turn,  need  is  what  you  see." 

I  sat  tight.  It  was  coming.  She  had  got  it  ready 
like  concentrated  essence  of  beef,  or  a  hypodermic 
charge  of  serum. 

1 '  The  French  children  have  been  five  years  without 
school.  We  must  get  the  school  teachers  back  to 
them.  Only  think  what  a  loss  of  five  school  years 
would  mean  to  the  generation  of  American  voters 
that  is  growing  up. ' ' 

"It  would  be  a  loss  you  couldn't  see  with  the  naked 
eye,"  I  said.  "You  have  not  been  following  Ameri- 
can education  as  closely  as  French." 

I  know  she  didn't  listen  to  that. 

"France  has  lost  one  entire  fifth  of  her  taxes. 
Twenty  per  cent,  of  her  taxes  were  paid  by  the 
devastated  regions. : 


5> 


LE   PETIT   DUC  93 

"Yes,  I  have  read  about  that,  too.  Lens,  Lille,  the 
coal,  the  manufacturing  section.  Yes,  I  have  read 
that." 

"Books  without  travel  are  bricks  without  straw," 
she  said. 

That  was  an  awfully  good  one !  I  doubt  if  it  was 
her  own.  She  probably  collected  lines  like  this  and 
salted  her  public  speeches  with  them.  I  had  now 
become  sure  that  she  addressed  audiences.  I  hoped 
the  audiences  were  not  wounded  soldiers  in  bed. 

"The  whole  region  north  of  the  Aisne  was  scien- 
tifically destroyed, ' '  she  continued.  ' '  Before  the  war 
France  normally  spent  two  billions  a  year  on  con- 
struction. Twenty  billions  are  needed  now  to  put  her 
buildings  back  where  they  were.  And  who  is  to  do 
this?  Of  French  males  between  the  ages  of  18  and 
34,  57  per  cent,  are  dead.  They  can  barely  cope  with 
the  deblayage.  The  farmers  that  survive  are  willing 
to  live  in  holes  to  carry  on,  but  what  are  they  to  do 
without  agricultural  machinery?" 

She  paused.  I  sat  battered  and  dumb.  Had  I 
known  the  answer  I  could  not  have  given  it.  But  she 
did  not  want  it.  Her  pause  was  for  rhetoric,  not  for 
information  or  for  breath.  Her  breath  never  failed. 
It  was  like  an  endless  chain  of  prayer. 

"What  is  necessary  to  a  nation?"  she  now  de- 
manded directly  of  me. 

"Why — I  should  say "  but  my  mind  stopped. 

"What,  I  mean  to  say,  does  any  nation  have  to 
have,  or  lapse  into  barbarism?" 

I  wondered  if  I  could  last  through  this  intermission 
without  turning  upon  her.  I  decided  that  I  could 
certainly  not  bear  the  next.  Perhaps  I  was  being 
punished  for  the  activity  of  my  lower  nature  at  the 


94  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

outset  of  my  talk.  But  of  this  I  am  by  no  means 
certain.  I  believe  that  she  was  one  of  those  who  are 
so  driven  by  the  steam  of  the  facts  they  have  amassed, 
that  they  plow  ahead,  telling  you  what  they  know, 
wholly  indifferent  to  whether  you  know  it  or  not. 

' 'Is  not  a  nation  like  an  individual?  If  you  and  I 
to  retain  our  position  among  civilized  people,  not  only 
require  a  roof  over  our  heads,  clothes  on  our  backs, 
food  in  our  stomachs,  but  must  also  have  health  and 
strength  and  education  and  money  to  support  art, 
literature,  science,  and  to  pay  our  way  in  an  increas- 
ingly expensive  and  competitive  world — is  it  not  plain 
what  France  needs !  Do  you  know  that  tuberculosis 
is  unfitting  men  and  women  to  be  parents,  and  is 
waiting  for  the  new  born1?  The  percentage  of  tuber- 
culosis in  France " 

My  mind  ceased  to  retain  any  more.  In  the  whirl 
of  statistics  which  continued,  I  sat  like  a  man  over- 
taken upon  a  mountain  by  thick  snow,  until  the  open- 
ing of  the  curtain  came  to  my  relief.  Truly,  if  you  are 
in  a  mood  to  be  let  alone,  keep  well  away  from  persons 
with  a  mission,  women  especially.  The  music  was 
not  able  to  distract  me.  I  prepared  some  remarks 
for  her  benefit,  and  rehearsed  them  all  through  the 
act. 

*  'With  everything  that  you  have  said, ' '  I  was  going 
to  tell  her,  "I  perfectly  agree.  Most  of  it  I  knew 
already.  I  am  seeing  France  exactly  as  you  advised. 
Tomorrow  I  go  to  Chateau-Thierry  and  Reims,  later 
to  Verdun,  under  the  kind  and  courteous  auspices  of 
our  officers  at  37,  Rue  de  Bassano.  So  far,  I  have 
been  under  the  equally  kind  auspices  of  the  Brit- 
ish, at  30,  Avenue  Marceau.  At  5,  Rue  Francois 
Premier,  the  courteous  French  officers  were  ready  to 


LE    PETIT    DUC  95 

place  their  services  at  my  disposal  and  take  me  to  all 
places  in  their  jurisdiction.  I  have  been  urged  to 
accept  a  week  in  Germany,  beginning  at  Coblenz ;  and 
General  Pershing  of  his  own  accord  has  personally 
bidden  me  to  ask  him  for  anything  that  he  can  cause 
to  be  done  for  me,  and  it  shall  be  done." 

But  I  said  none  of  it.  It  would  have  come  from 
my  lower  nature,  although  it  would  have  all  been  true. 

After  all,  the  formidable  lady  who  had  loaded  me  so 
heavily  with  advice  and  instruction  was  not  thinking 
of  herself,  but  of  her  cause.  I  had  wondered  if  she 
would  bring  herself  in,  would  dilate  upon  her  own 
exploits  in  benevolence ;  but  she  never  did.  And  her 
facts  and  figures  were  all  too  true.  But  I  could  not, 
I  really  could  not,  trust  my  lower  nature  through 
another  intermission. 

"I  am  going  to  bid  you  good-night,"  I  said,  as  the 
curtain  closed  again. 

It  was  a  blow,  I  could  see  that.  ' '  Oh,  stay  it  out ! ' ' 
she  said.     "We  can  talk  some  more." 

"Awfully  sorry.  It  has  been  ever  so  interesting 
and  helpful.  I  have  an  early  start  tomorrow — and 
the  third  act  isn't  much." 

"You  leave  Paris  tomorrow!"  She  thought 
rapidly  and  produced  this  final,  compact  parcel  of 
tuition : 

"You  must  make  allowances  for  Paris.  If  you  find 
the  hotels  and  the  taxi-drivers  and  the  police  officials 
when  you  go  for  your  card  of  identification,  rude, 
remember  the  four  years  they  have  been  through. 
Think  how  it  must  exasperate  their  nerves  to  be 
unable  to  settle  down  now,  to  be  still  overwhelmed 
with  strangers  like  this.  Do  make  allowances. ' ' 
:I've   been   doing   nothing    else!"    I    returned, 


<«- 


96  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

levelling  each  word  straight  at  her.  "And  I  have 
been  beseeching  our  soldiers  to  do  nothing  else. 
French  manners  have  always  been  better  outside 
Paris,  as  American  manners  are  outside  New  York. 
And  now  the  hotels  and  taxis  and  police  officials  here 
are  simply  beyond  belief — democracy  at  its  dregs." 

Directly  I  spoke  of  our  soldiers,  she  fixed  me  with 
concentrated  scrutiny,  every  word  that  had  followed 
missing  her  entirely. 

"I  know!"  she  cried.  "You're  on  some  vice 
mission." 

"We 're  finding  it  up-hill  work, ' '  retorted  my  lower 
self.  ' '  Young  Frenchmen  hold  chastity  a  provincial- 
ism they've  got  beyond,  young  Americans  hold  it  a 
virtue  they  haven 't  reached.     Que  voulez-vous  ? ' ' 

She  probably  took  in  but  little  of  that,  such  was  her 
satisfaction  in  having  finally  placed  me;  and  with 
that  I  had  risen  from  my  seat  and  was  gone.  Once 
again  a  few  days  later  I  came  face  to  face  with  her  as 
we  went  up  together  in  the  elevator  at  the  Hotel  de 
Crillon,  but  she  did  not  know  me  from  Adam.  It  was 
a  great  relief. 


IX 


KANSAS     ON     AN     ISLAND 


Not  yet  were  my  conversations  over  for  this  day. 
I  emerged  from  the  Trianon  Lyrique  upon  pools  of 
water  spread  in  so  many  places  that  my  short  walk  to 
the  Metro  station  was  materially  lengthened  through 
avoiding  them.  The  floods  of  rain  which  had  evi- 
dently been  pouring  down  while  I  was  being  given 
French  lessons,  had  left  the  air  bleaker  and  damper 
even  than  when  I  had  entered  the  theatre.  In  the 
almost  empty  train  I  smiled  at  myself  for  so  resent- 
ing the  French  lessons.  But  it  is  only  superior 
persons  who  don't  mind  being  told  what  they  ought 
to  know,  and  very  superior  persons  indeed  who  don't 
mind  being  told  what  they  know  already.  The  right- 
minded  reader  will  say  that  I  should  be  ashamed  of 
my  conduct  to  this  instructive  female.  So  I  should 
— and  am  not.  The  lady  had  really  added  to  my 
knowledge ;  be  that  said  for  her.  She  had  given  me 
figures  and  summaries  that  I  had  not  known  before, 
which  I  later  found  to  be  accurate,  and  which  made  a 
solid  frame,  so  to  speak,  for  the  picture  of  devasta- 
tion upon  which  I  had  been  gazing  during  my  pilgrim- 
age. Albert,  Bapaume,  Peronne,  which  I  had  seen, 
and  the  withered  soil,  and  all  the  rest,  were  the 
visible,  physical  destruction  that  spelt  the  twenty  per 
cent,  destruction  of  taxes.  The  lady  was  another 
figure  in  the  iridescent  horde  that  ran  and  twinkled 
over  the  surface  of  Paris ;  a  winged  ant,  busied  upon 

97 


98  NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 

errands  of  good;  and  with  all  her  too-bristling 
energy,  she  fitted  in  well  with  what  I  had  said  to  the 
gloomy,  beclouded  boy  at  the  cathedral  of  Amiens. 

From  the  Metro  I  ascended  to  the  surface  of  the 
earth  at  the  Place  du  Havre.  It  was  between  times : 
the  small  French  cafes  and  the  shops  were  long 
closed,  the  theatres  not  yet  out,  and  the  St.  Lazare 
station  had  mostly  ceased  to  suck  in  or  to  disgorge 
travellers.  In  this  lull  of  the  hurrying  ants,  taxis  and 
omnibuses  were  few,  and  wide  wet  expanses  of  as- 
phalt visible ;  and  there,  on  one  of  those  islands  that 
make  a  refuge  for  street  crossers  during  the  crowded 
hours,  stood  a  tall  American  soldier.  My  plans  had 
been  for  a  little  diary  and  a  great  deal  of  bed,  but  I 
changed  them,  and  walked  over  to  the  island. 

"Can  you  guess  my  nationality  in  this  light f" 
said  I. 

His  teeth  were  visible  during  the  smile  that  began 
his  answer. 

"There  are  parts  of  Paris  that  are  livelier  than 
this, ' '  I  continued. 

"I'm  from  Kansas,  but  I've  found  that  out,"  he 
returned.  ' '  Oh,  yes ;  there 's  a  heap  doing  here  when 
a  fellow  feels  like  doing  it." 

' '  Don 't  you  ever  feel  like  that  I ' ' 

"Oh,  yes,  sometimes.  I've  been  around  this  city 
some.     It's  worth  seeing,  day  and  night." 

"It  certainly  is,"  I  agreed. 

"I  guess  this  isn't  your  first  visit,"  said  he. 

"I  came  here  when  I  was  twelve  and  I've  been 
lucky  enough  to  come  again,  more  than  once.  I  lived 
here  once  for  more  than  a  year.  Of  course  I  trav- 
elled, too,  during  that  time." 

;Been  in  other  parts  of  Europe,  too?"  he  asked. 


<<- 


KANSAS   ON   AN   ISLAND  99 

"Several.  But  I'm  American,  you  know,  first, 
last,  and  all  the  time.,, 

He  was  thoughtful  for  a  moment.  ' '  Travel  would 
make  me  more  American  all  the  time. ' ' 

"Then  you're  as  anxious  to  get  home  as  all  the 
others  are?" 

"Oh,  I'll  be  glad  to  get  home.  But  there's  some 
been  over  here  longer  than  I  have,  and  it's  only  fair 
their  turn  should  come  first." 

He  shifted  forth  and  back  slowly  from  one  foot  to 
another,  his  head  two  or  three  inches  taller  than  mine. 

"If  I  am  keeping  you "  I  said. 

"Oh,  no,  I'm  on  duty  here  for  a  while  yet." 

He  was  of  the  American  Military  Police,  and  he 
stood  here  during  certain  of  the  night  hours  for  the 
benefit  of  such  American  soldiers  as  might  need 
either  direction  or  discipline.  Here  was  Kansas 
upon  an  island  in  the  Place  du  Havre,  policing  New 
Jersey  and  Michigan  and  California  and  all  the  rest 
of  us !  Never  throughout  this  whole  journey  did  my 
mind  adjust  itself  to  this  stirring  of  America  into  the 
sour  broth  of  Europe. 

"I  often  wonder  how  my  own  town  would  rub  its 
eyes  if  it  saw  a  French  soldier  policing  French 
soldiers  in  the  middle  of  the  street." 

"Well,"  he  answered  judicially,  "I  know  my  town 
would  quit  after  the  first  rub  or  two,  and  start  jacking 
up  the  prices,  same  as  the  French  have.  You  from 
New  York?" 

"Oh,  no.  New  York  never  rubs  its  eyes  at  any- 
thing.    I  'm  from  Philadelphia. ' ' 

"H'm.     Newton  is  my  town.     Newton,  Kansas." 

Nothing  could  be  plainer  in  the  tone  of  this  an- 
nouncement than  his  quiet  and  permanent  satisfac- 


100  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

tion  with  Newton,  Kansas.  If  the  staple  product  of 
that  town  was  Americans  like  this,  I  hoped  that  its 
population  would  double  each  year.  In  his  observ- 
ant, poised  self-reliance,  he  justified  our  whole 
theory.     And  all  of  six-foot-one. 

"So  you  think  jacking  up  the  prices  is  not  a 
monopoly  of  the  French?"  I  asked. 

"It's  human  nature,"  he  stated.  Patience  and 
toleration  pervaded  his  voice. 

"Where  we  were  lately " 

He  was  interrupted.  A  night-faring  doughboy  had 
come  up,  and  asked  him  some  question.  He  walked  a 
few  steps  with  the  inquirer  to  the  other  side  of  the 
island,  and  there  evidently  gave  him  some  detailed 
directions,  pointing  once  or  twice  with  a  slow  and 
most  graceful  gesture.  But  this  had  not  diverted  his 
thoughts. 

"Where  we  were  lately,"  he  resumed — "have 
you  ever  tasted  French  champagne  made  for  our 
express  benefit?" 

"I  don't  think  so.  Not  over  here  in  France,  any- 
how. ' ' 

"Well,  don't  you  do  it."  He  gave  me  this  piece 
of  advice  after  a  hair's  breadth  of  hesitation  and  a 
puzzled  glance,  for  which  I  could  not  account.  "I 
haven't  had  a  very  wide  experience  in  champagne 
myself, ' '  he  continued.  i '  But  you  knew  this  was  put 
up  for  Americans  just  after  your  first  swallow  of  it. 
No,  I'm  wrong:  just  before."  Again  I  caught  the 
gleam  of  his  teeth  as  he  smiled  before  he  proceeded. 
"They  had  the  two  flags  crossed  on  the  label.  Ours 
and  theirs,  you  understand,  most  affectionate.  Some 
Portuguese  were  there,  too.  Well,  when  a  Portuguese 
called  for  a  bottle,  they  charged  him  seven  francs. 


KANSAS   ON   AN   ISLAND  101 

Americans  were  charged  thirty-five.  The  captain 
closed  np  the  shop  when  he  found  that  out.  Down 
came  the  price  to  the  Portuguese  level.' ' 

"The  French  are  different  from  us,"  I  said. 

1 '  Different !  Yes,  we  all  have  found  that  out.  The 
captain  was  going  to  drain  a  cesspool  and  put  it  in 
some  other  place  more  sanitary.  The  French  farmer 
was  very  hot  at  the  captain  and  claimed  ten  thousand 
francs  damages  for  his  manure  pile.  The  French  are 
certainly  different,  and  they  think  we  are  certainly 
different,  and  I  think  that  the  less  we  see  of  each 
other  the  better  we  're  liable  to  like  each  other.  The 
Lafayette  affair  was  a  good  while  ago,  and  I'm  not  as 
grateful  to  him  as  I  was  before  I  met  his  posterity." 

"But  you  certainly  think  the  two  nations  should  be 
friends ! "  I  exclaimed  in  a  pressing  manner.  ' '  They 
don't  expect  you  to  pay  the  first  price  they  ask. 
They're  used  to  bargaining.  It's  part  of  the  game 
with  them. ' ' 

"We  play  poker  in  Kansas,  but  we're  not  used  to 
playing  it  for  a  hen's  egg  with  old  ladies  in  caps. 
Oh,  I  know!  We  slapped  our  money  down  first  go 
and  it  was  bigger  money  than  they'd  ever  seen,  and 
they  hadn't  been  seeing  much  anyhow  for  four  years. 
We  all  go  down  when  temptation's  strong  enough, 
and  I  don 't  hold  that  against  them. ' ' 

"Why  hold  anything  against  them?" 

He  reflected.  "I  don't  know  as  I  do.  Not  more 'n 
I  hold  against  everybody — including  myself!"  He 
gave  a  joyous  chuckle  at  this. 

A  couple  of  American  soldiers  passed  near  with  a 
couple  of  girls.  The  girls  were  keeping  very  close 
indeed  to  the  soldiers.  The  young  men  did  not  have 
the  look  of  being  entirely  captivated  by  the  com- 


102  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

panions  whom  they  had  secured — or  who  had  secured 
them.  My  Kansas  friend  followed  them  for  a 
moment  with  his  eye,  which  then  once  more  rested, 
oddly  interrogative,  upon  me. 

"Let  me  tell  you,"  I  said,  "something  you  may  not 
have  thought  of — though  you  have  thought  of  more 
things  than  any  enlisted  man  I  've  yet  talked  to — and 
I've  done  quite  a  little  preaching  to  them  in  this 
city." 

A  change,  as  of  resignation,  passed  over  his  figure ; 
it  seemed  to  settle. 

"Well,  preaching  can  be  good,"  he  said.  "I'll 
stay." 

"Here's  my  sermon  to  you.  I've  given  it  to  a  lot 
of  others — and  they've  listened.  For  hundreds  of 
years  these  French  have  had  to  be  fighting  their 
neighbors  and  paying  taxes  to  meet  it.  We've  had 
no  neighbors  to  fight.  We've  only  had  five  wars 
before  this,  and  free  farms  for  everybody,  genera- 
tion after  generation.  No  such  thing  in  France. 
They've  had  to  look  close  at  their  pennies,  while 
we've  been  throwing  gold  pieces  to  western  bar-tend- 
ers for  a  drink — and  never  missing  it.  But  that's 
not  all.  The  fathers  of  these  same  French  who  are 
overcharging  you  saw  the  Prussians  overrun  their 
homes,  and  rout  their  armies,  and  capture  their 
emperor,  and  make  them  pay  the  bill.  It  was  a  big 
bill.  Your  father  never  knew  the  experience  of 
having  to  dive  down  into  his  jeans  to  help  pay  an 
indemnity  to  a  foreign  conqueror.  That  was  less 
than  fifty  years  ago.  The  old  ladies  in  caps  you 
mention  were  young  wives  then,  and  they  saw  their 
men  go  to  the  front,  and  didn't  always  see  them  come 
back.    And  they  had  to  save  and  save  their  coppers 


KANSAS   ON   AN   ISLAND  103 

and  their  poor  little  pieces  of  silver  to  meet  that  huge 
bill  of  Germany's.  That's  what  they  were  doing 
while  we  were  spreading  westward  to  free  farms  at 
our  ease.  If  our  fathers  had  known  the  bitter  experi- 
ence of  these  French,  don't  you  think  it  likely  they 
would  have  taught  their  children  to  close  their  hands 
over  coin  rather  than  to  open  them,  and  don't  you 
think  the  children  would  be  interested  in  charging  as 
high  for  an  egg  as  anybody  was  fool  enough  to  be 
willing  to  pay  ? ' ' 

He  had  watched  me  very  steadily  while  I  spoke, 
and,  as  seemed  his  custom,  waited  before  answering. 

"You  have  pointed  out  another  way  to  look  at  it. 
History  is  something  I  don't  know  much  about.  I 
don't  know,  if  I  had  known,  that  I'd  have  put  their 
history  alongside  of  ours  and  drawn  conclusions  that 
way.  Yes,  sir,  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  that  was  so." 
He  indulged  himself  with  a  moment  of  rumination. 
"I'll  mention  that.  I  have  talked  to  some  of  the  boys 
who  are  sore  at  the  prices." 

"In  1780  the  French  were  sore  at  ours,"  said  I. 
"You  spoke  about  Lafayette  just  now?" 

"Well,  I  learned  about  him  at  school.  Couldn't  tell 
you  the  story  of  his  life,  though." 

"Neither  could  I.  There  were  several  well-known 
Frenchmen  came  over  to  help  us.  Eochambeau,  and  a 
young  fellow  named  de  Fersen.  He  wrote  home  about 
us,  and  he  said — well,  it  will  sound  quite  familiar 
to  you.  He  said  almost  exactly  these  words:  'They 
fleece  us  pitilessly,  the  price  of  everything  is  exorbit- 
ant.' And  then  he  went  on  to  say  that  in  our 
dealings  with  the  French  we  treated  them  more  like 
enemies  than  friends.  That  our  cupidity  was  un- 
equalled ;  money  was  our  god.    There  was  more  that 


104  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

he  said.  He  had  met  some  very  fine  people,  quite  a 
number  of  them,  but  he  thought  the  people  in  general 
were  a  set  of  robbers.  Now,  you  see,  this  young 
Frenchman  had  come  over  to  help  Washington  win 
the  war." 

"Do  you  mind  saying  those  first  words  over 
again?"  said  Kansas. 

"About  fleecing  us?" 

"Yes." 

"  'They  fleece  us  pitilessly,  the  price  of  everything 
is  exorbitant. '  " 

"Thank  you,  I'll  tell  that  to  the  boys.  It  sounds 
natural. ' ' 

His  duty  had  caused  him  to  turn  and  inspect  the 
Place  du  Havre,  lest  his  services  or  his  authority 
should  be  needed.  More  people  were  beginning  to 
pass  and  cross,  a  more  crowded  hour  had  just  set  in. 
He  found  nothing,  however,  to  divert  his  attention. 
He  turned  back  to  me  and  took  it  up. 

"But  I  don't  need  any  points  for  myself.  Before 
I  came  over  here  I  was  a  year  on  the  Mexican  border. 
The  El  Paso  barbers  didn't  sit  down  on  any  prices 
for  us  soldiers.  Nobody  did,  barber  or  grocer  or 
tobacco  shop  or  anybody.  Let  a  soldier  walk  in  any 
place  and  the  prices  went  up  like — like  putting  your 
thermometer  out  in  that  Rio  Grande  sun.  Well,  if 
my  own  people  do  that  to  me,  my  own  people,"  he 
repeated  with  emphasis,  "what  call  have  I  to  blame 
these  French?  Blame  them  for  that,  I  mean.  For 
I  do  say  that  no  American  that  I  ever  saw  to  know 
would  charge  his  rescuers  rent  for  the  trenches  they 
rescued  him  in." 

1  i  They  charged  themselves, ' '  I  said. 

"I  don't  call  that  an  answer,"  he  retorted. 


KANSAS   ON   AN   ISLAND  105 

"Land  holdings  here  are  often  so  small  that  a 
trench  cuts  a  big  slice  of  what  was  available  for  crops. 
The  farmer  had  to  raise  food  for  France.  France 
paid  him  damages  to  help  him  carry  on." 

"And  we  got  shot  to  help  France  carry  on." 

"I  don't  say  it  wasn't  clumsy." 

"Clumsy!"  he  chuckled.  "I've  another  word 
for  it." 

"Listen!  German  propaganda  twisted  another  fact 
so  as  to  hurt  France  with  us.  The  heavy  timber 
and  iron  field  revetments  and  all  the  tools  and 
material  to  build  them  cost  money.  It's  like  fixtures 
in  a  house.  Any  regiment  moving  into  a  trench  that 
another  regiment  was  vacating  signed  rough  inven- 
tories of  trench  stores  they  were  taking  over.  No 
money  passed  between  English  regiments,  it  was 
more  for  discipline,  but  money  did  pass  between  us 
and  the  French.  That  was  made  to  look  like  rent  by 
German  propaganda. ' ' 

"All  right.     Any  more?" 

"Yes.  Wait  for  all  the  facts  before  you  jump. 
English  regiments  have  drunk  from  French  wells. 
The  next  regiments  that  marched  by  found  the  pump 
handles  wrenched  off  and  had  to  pay  for  water.  It 
didn't  look  well  to  thirsty  men.  But  French  wells 
are  often  shallow.  They  would  have  been  drained 
dry,  and  it  was  all  the  water  the  peasants  had. ' ' 

"Say,  brother,  you  know  these  French  more  than 
I  have  had  a  chance  to.  What  do  you  make  of 
them?" 

"Look  at  this  splendid  city  of  theirs,"  I  replied. 
"Look  at  the  fight  they  put  up." 

"Yes,  that's  all  so.  Yes.  But  say,  take  the  way 
they  lie.    Why,  they  don't  lie  on  the  American  plan 


106  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

at  all.  We  don't  lie  just  to  be  pleasant.  Got  to  have 
a  stronger  reason.  And  morals.  Why,  decent  girls 
are  not  allowed  to  go  for  a  walk  with  a  young  man. 
Why,  boys  come  back  from  the  leave  areas  and  tell 
me  that  French  parents  were  astonished  that  their 
daughters  could  be  trusted  alone  with  us. ' ' 

"Europe  is  different,"  I  said.  "But  we  might 
learn  a  lot  of  good  things  from  the  French. ' ' 

1  'Well,  give  me  America.  I  Ve  heard  what  you  say 
several  times.  A  man  stood  here  the  other  night, 
and  told  me  what  a  splendid  thing  it  was  going  to  be 
for  America  to  be  filled  with  young  men  bringing 
home  such  a  heap  of  knowledge  they  never  could  have 
got  at  home.  Well,  America  will  not  be  filled. 
Those  who  have  seen  the  leave  areas  are  going  to 
think  France  is  a  better  country  than  those  who  never 
saw  any  of  it  but  the  war  regions.  Of  course  that's 
so.  But  you  have  got  to  be  educated  before  you  can 
get  education — the  foreign  kind  that  he  meant. 
About  the  only  education  that  most  of  the  boys  will 
take  home  is  more  varieties  of 

He  stopped  himself  short,  and  for  the  third  time  I 
was  aware  of  his  interrogative  glance  at  me.  I  had 
known  what  he  was  about  to  say  well  enough.  He 
had  decided,  for  some  reason  that  his  glance  repre- 
sented but  did  not  disclose,  not  to  say  it.  I  decided 
to  say  it.  While  I  was  meditating  just  how,  for  I 
wished  to  be  neither  pharisaical  on  the  one  hand 
nor  coarse  on  the  other,  meditation  was  spared  me 
and  a  spontaneous  way  provided.  Paris  was  coming 
alive  again  for  its  midnight  existence.  The  theatres 
were  out,  late  suburban  trains  were  ready  in  St. 
Lazare,  the  Metro  exits  were  spouting  passengers 
into  the  Place  du  Havre.    The  number  of  our  dough- 


KANSAS    ON   AN   ISLAND  107 

boys  on  pleasure  bent  increased,  they  were  passing  by 
in  couples  and  fours,  the  bloom  of  the  New  World 
still  rich  and  unworn  upon  their  young  faces,  and 
about  their  buoyant  figures — and  hanging  upon  their 
arms  with  practised  clutch,  the  Old  World  in  a  skirt. 
No  bloom  left  there,  without  or  within.  Female,  but 
feminine  no  longer.  The  tragic  moulting  of  a 
wounded  bird  of  prey. 

1 'See  them!"  I  murmured  aloud,  after  one  couple 
that  had  crossed  close  on  the  island  and  gone  upon 
their  way. 

"What's  that?"  inquired  the  member  of  the 
military  police. 

"Did  you  notice  him?"  I  asked.  "Did  you  notice 
her?" 

"Oh,  yes." 

"I  would  have  no  sermon  for  him,"  I  continued. 
"None  for  any  of  them.  They're  human.  And 
away  from  home.  But  I'd  like  to  say,  'Won't  you 
stop  a  minute?  Won't  you  just  stop  and  look  at  her 
for  one  minute?'  " 

"They  couldn't  see  them,"  returned  the  soldier — 
"not  before  morning.  I've  been  blind  myself  at  this 
time  of  night. ' '  He  looked  me  up  and  down  with  a 
new  eye,  and  it  was  in  a  new  voice  that  he  said: 
"Why,  I  figured  you  were  one  of  those  social-evil 
guys  taking  longer  than  usual  to  reach  your  point." 
I  knew  you  were  long-suffering,"  I  returned; 

but  I  didn  't  know  how  long. ' ' 

Oh,  they  mean  well,  they  mean  well.  Better  than 
they  get  treated.  But  you  know  history — natural 
history,  too." 

I  took  out  my  watch.  "I  intended  to  be  in  bed  an 
hour  ago,"  I  said. 


i  < 


108  NEIGHBOKS   HENCEFOKTH 

He  held  out  his  hand.    "Come  round  again  when 
I'm  here." 

Yes,  decidedly  I  wished  great  increase  to  the  popu- 
lation of  Newton,  Kansas,  were  he  of  its  daily  breed. 
If  the  plain  people  were  everywhere  such  as  he,  faith 
in  them  would  be  more  than  justified.     Like  the 
blond  Tommy  at  Albert,  he  had  also  his  philosophy, 
attained  and  steady:  less  highly  wrought  than  the 
Tommy's,  because  Kansas  is  less  highly  wrought 
than  London.    But  it  would  serve.    France  did  not 
appeal  to  him.     He  had  been  made  in  America. 
That   set  limits   to   his   grasp   of  Europe.     These 
both  barred  his   benefiting  and   shielded  his    suf- 
fering from  the  complexities  of  the  ancient  Latin 
race.    He  would  have  use  neither  for  their  exquisite 
mental  subtlety,  nor  their  exquisite  moral  duplicity. 
I  hoped  that  he  might  go  home  as  soon  as  was  fair 
to  our  Allies ;  I  hoped  that  all  our  doughboys  might. 
He  was  shrewdly  correct  in  his  judgment  that  most  of 
them  would  extend  the   area   of   their   permanent 
knowledge  by  but  little  except  chromatic  sensuality. 
In  the  seething,  iridescent  ant-hill  that  Paris  was  in 
the  spring  of  1919,  they  were  truly  out  of  the  picture, 
and  home  was  the  right  place  for  them.     Their  work 
was  over.     They  had  fought  a  good  fight  when  neces- 
sary, they  had  been  charming  with  children,  and 
respectful  to  decent  women  between  whiles.     In  my 
opinion  the  New  World  had  no  apologies  whatever  to 
offer  the  Old.     Such  were  some  of  my  thoughts  as  I 
went  to  bed  and,  as  I  recalled  the  slight  jar  dealt  me 
at  the  end  of  each  conversation  that  I  had  held  this 
night,  the  last  strand  of  coherence  which  crossed  my 
mind  before  sleep  overtook  me  was, ' '  Can  I  be  getting 
to  look  like  a  philanthropist?" 


A     GLIMPSE     OF     THE     POILU 

Very  much  do  I  wish  that  it  had  come  in  my  way 
to  see  and  to  speak  with  the  French  poilu  at  length 
and  at  leisure,  as  it  had  been  my  luck  to  do  with  the 
British  Tommy  and  the  American  doughboy.  More 
talk  with  the  Tommy  would  have  enabled  me  to  say 
with  a  measure  of  certainty  more  about  him  and  his 
wonderful  character:  that  hour  at  Albert  left  me 
with  the  never-to-be-granted  wish  that  I  might  then 
and  there  have  had  days  in  his  friendly  company 
under  conditions  so  favoring  to  intimacy.  A 
glimpse,  even  slighter,  of  the  poilu  which  I  had  upon 
the  morning  after  my  confidences  exchanged  with  my 
fellow-countryman  in  the  Place  du  Havre,  also  left 
me  regretful  that  it  was  so  brief.  Something  I  had 
taken  with  me  and  something  I  had  gathered  of 
understanding  about  the  American  soldier ;  and  in  the 
same  way,  something,  though  less,  of  the  British;  of 
the  French  but  very  little  at  first-hand,  and  even  this 
to  be  set  down  here  with  diffidence;  of  the  Italian, 
nothing  whatever  at  first-hand.  Of  him  I  can  only 
repeat  what  everybody  knows — that  he  is  of  the  land 
which  from  centuries  before  Julius  Cassar  down 
through  Dante,  Columbus,  Michelangelo,  Palestrina, 
Galileo,  to  Marconi,  has  produced  more  genius 
than  any  other  two  countries  of  the  world  put 
together;  that  his  race  continues  a  noble,  beautiful, 

109 


110  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

adequate  race ;  that  he  fought  with  fierce  and  gallant 
bravery  on  the  steep  sides  of  mountains ;  and  that  his 
country  is  doing  better  today  than  some  of  her  Allies. 
From  politicians  and  newspapers  it  is  that  hindrance 
to  true  international  understanding  chiefly  comes — 
the  politician  can  utter  a  few  public  sentences  that 
will  estrange  two  peoples,  one  editor  can  write  a 
paragraph  which  will  have  the  same  effect. 

The  poilu  that  I  saw  for  a  while  this  next  morning 
got  into  our  car  soon  after  it  had  passed  the  Eastern 
Railway  station  and  out  of  the  Pantin  gate.  He 
stood  by  the  roadside,  made  us  a  sign,  and  asked  for 
a  lift  as  far  as  Claye.  Claye,  interesting  because  the 
Huns  got  as  close  to  Paris  as  this  in  1914,  was  not 
very  far,  little  more  than  half-way  to  Meaux,  and  this 
afforded  but  a  brief  chance  to  lead  the  poilu  to  any 
opening  of  his  nature.  Could  I  have  said  to  him, 
1  'How  beautiful  is  the  corner  of  your  village  where 
the  old  bridge  crosses  the  river!"  or  any  other  word 
of  intimate  admiration  for  his  petit  pays,  his  inch  of 
France,  where  grew  his  ancestral  roots,  that  would 
have  gone  at  once  all  the  way  to  his  heart.  A 
Frenchman's  patriotism  is  very  concrete.  He  loves 
with  passion  his  own  place,  his  own  acre,  his  little 
spadeful  of  France.  He  wishes  to  live  and  if  possible 
to  die  on  the  actual  piece  of  earth  which  has  been 
tilled  by  his  forefathers,  tilled  by  himself,  whereon 
centuries  of  his  kin  have  quickened,  lived,  and  passed. 
We  Americans  do  not  fold  our  tents  like  the  Arab  and 
as  silently  steal  away,  but  we  are  the  latest  version 
of  the  nomad.  We  transfer  our  never-rooted  lives 
from  Fort  Worth  to  Spokane,  or  from  Albany  to  San 
Diego,  about  as  readily  as  we  cross  the  street.  We 
have  emptied  the  word  "home"  of  all  its  hoarded 


A   GLIMPSE    OF   THE   POILU         111 

meaning  and  sanctity.  Against  whatever  benefits 
this  may  bring,  it  has  wrought  incalculable  harm  to 
the  national  soul.  I  had  been  no  nearer  the  poilu's 
country  than  the  line  between  Lyons  and  Modane — 
he  was  from  near  Grenoble — and  the  best  I  could  do 
by  way  of  establishing  some  bond  between  us  was 
to  praise  the  renown  of  Grenoble  as  a  seat  of  learn- 
ing and  exclaim: 

"How  beautiful  are  the  mountains  of  Dauphine!" 

"Then  monsieur  knows  them?"  he  responded  at 
once — and  became  less  shy,  or  reserved,  or  respectful, 
or  whatever  it  was  that  his  own  nature  and  the 
presence  of  an  American  captain  who  was  with  us 
caused  this  enlisted  man  to  be.  He  was  going  back 
to  them,  his  mountains.  In  all  the  little  that  he  said, 
the  emotion  of  return  brooded  behind  his  words.  He 
was  existing  to  go  back;  that  was  it.  Going  back  and 
going  on — these  were  his  two  vital  motives.  We  have 
only  one  of  them — going  on.  The  soldier  on  the 
island  might  yearn  for  Newton,  Kansas;  the  other 
fellow,  the  one  from  Danbury,  had  said  that  once  back 
there, ' '  never  again. ' '  But  if  the  one  could  better  his 
lot  by  moving  from  Newton  to  the  apple  country  of 
Oregon,  and  the  other  by  leaving  Danbury  for  the 
plum  belt  in  California,  or  the  oil  belt  in  Texas,  or  any 
other  belt  where  material  profit  beckoned,  why  the 
betting  is  at  least  ninety-nine  to  one  that  the  lure  of 
betterment  would  snap  the  tie  of  home  and  that  they 
would  go  in  a  minute.  Not  so  was  it  with  this 
Frenchman.  To  him  his  petit  pays  was  forever 
better  than  any  betterment. 

"Then  monsieur  knows  them?" 

In  those  four  wistful  words  was  not  only  a  longing 
for  the  sight  of  his  mountains,  but  a  love  of  their 


112  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

looks.  You  will  remember  the  words  of  the  Tommy 
at  Albert:  "The  French  'ave  a  great  idea  of  the 
beautiful,  and  a  very  poor  one  of  sanitytion. ' '  Kan- 
sas on  the  island  could  not  have  said  just  that.  He 
was  not  ripe  enough  for  that  particular  kind  of  gener- 
alization. He  was  quite  capable  of  appraising  and 
loathing  the  villainous  plumbing  and  the  villainous 
absence  of  plumbing  in  France ;  but  there  he  stopped. 
Westminster  Abbey — or  a  thousand  other  sights — 
had  made  ready  the  Tommy's  natural  ready  eye  to  see 
the  excellences  of  French  architecture.  No  West- 
minster Abbeys  are  in  Kansas  so  far.  Once  a  chauf- 
feur, whom  I  had  engaged  at  Reims  for  a  long  jour- 
ney and  informed  that  we  should  sleep  at  Orleans  the 
next  night,  said  immediately : 

' '  Then  I  shall  see  if  their  statue  of  Joan  of  Arc  is 
as  good  a  one  as  ours. ' ' 

Imagine  a  chauffeur  whom  you  were  engaging  in 
Philadelphia  to  go  to  Chicago,  saying  immediately : 

"Then  I  shall  see  if  St.  Gaudens'  Lincoln  beats 
our  statue  in  Fairmount  Park. ' ' 

A  sense  of  beauty  and  of  art,  and  a  daily-bread  use 
of  beauty  and  art — that  is  one  gift  of  the  European 
continent  to  its  plain  people,  which  Kansas  cannot 
give,  nor  Massachusetts,  nor  any  state  in  our  New 
World.  In  talking  with  any  Frenchman,  high  or  low, 
it  will  help  our  understanding  of  him  to  remember 
this.  It  will  partially,  though  not  totally,  explain 
that  fourth  dimension  of  his  character  which  answers 
to  nothing  in  ours.  Art,  symmetry,  has  a  hand 
in  almost  all  he  thinks  and  does,  including  his 
immoralities. 

The  poilu,  then,  was  not  like  Kansas  on  the  island, 
nor  yet  was  he  like  the  Tommy  at  Albert,  who  had 


A   GLIMPSE   OF   THE   POILU  113 

said  that  he  believed  he  had  sentiment,  but  that  this 
would  take  the  shape  of  keeping  him  away  from, 
rather  than  taking  him  back  to,  a  home  in  ruins. 
There  he  was  of  closer  kin  to  Kansas  than  to  the 
poilu.  His  home  near  Grenoble  was  not  in  ruins,  but 
had  it  been  so,  this  would  have  made  no  difference  to 
him,  I  am  perfectly  sure ;  no  more  than  it  had  made 
to  the  lady  who  had  come  back  from  Nevers  to  see  if 
she  could  find  her  house  beneath  the  rubbish  piles  of 
Noyon;  nor  to  the  woman  with  the  gash  who  had 
returned  to  a  half  annihilated  estaminet  in  a  wholly 
annihilated  region,  and  had  given  me  a  loaf  of  bread, 
and  had  talked  cheerfully  of  her  future.  Going  bach 
and  going  on:  in  her  also  these  had  been  the  two  vital 
motives.  Through  these  I  connected  her  with  the 
Noyon  lady,  with  this  poilu,  and  with  one  other  who 
had  been  a  poilu.  The  cheerful  and  communicative 
valet  at  my  hotel  in  Paris,  he  who  had  been  buried  for 
a  day  and  three  times  wounded,  who  told  me  that  I 
should  visit  the  South  where  they  were  more  amiable 
than  in  Paris — he  was  looking  forward  to  taking  up 
heavier  work  at  Toulouse,  his  home,  as  soon  as  he 
should  be  well  enough.  Going  back  and  going  on! 
It  was  the  unspoken  watchword  of  the  people  of 
France. 

The  poilu  was  a  grave  personality,  of  few  words, 
unlike  the  valet  from  Toulouse,  who  was  of  many 
words.  Both  were  peasants,  and  both  somewhere 
along  in  their  thirties,  I  should  say.  I  don't  know 
whether  their  taciturnity  and  loquacity  were  individ- 
ual or  of  race,  and  it  matters  nothing.  Various  races 
inhabit  the  different  parts  of  France,  some  silent, 
some  not  at  all  so,  some  more  open-handed,  some 
less ;  and  they  vary  in  their  dialects  as  widely  as  they 


114  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

do  in  their  characteristics — as  widely  as  a  citizen  of 
Vermont  from  a  citizen  of  Louisiana.  It  is  the  traits 
they  all  hold  in  common  that  mean  France,  that  have 
built  her  thought,  her  art,  her  literature,  her  law,  her 
religion ;  it  is  these,  too,  which  have  made  her  spring 
from  the  ashes  of  herself  under  which  she  with  the 
rest  of  the  world  believed  she  was  expiring,  and  be- 
come, far  more  truly  than  the  Prussian  who  coined 
the  phrase,  a  figure  in  shining  armor ;  and  it  is  these 
traits  finally  which,  in  the  great  emergency  of  peace, 
will  prevent  the  hideous  wound  which  Germany  dealt 
her  from  being  a  mortal  wound.  Through  their  spir- 
itual passion  for  the  earth  of  France,  backed  by  their 
power  of  infinite  thrift,  her  people  will  save  her, 
unless  prevented  by  the  tragedy  of  errors  which 
began  with  the  Armistice  and  has  been  played  by  the 
Allies  ever  since. 

At  his  little  place  near  Grenoble,  the  poilu  had  car- 
ried on  some  sort  of  trade  in  leather  before  he  took 
up  arms,  and  this  he  was  planning  to  resume.  In  his 
blood  flowed  the  whole  education  of  his  forefathers' 
deep-rooted  and  coherent  past,  and  to  this  had  been 
added  the  education  of  the  war.  I  told  him  what  of 
his  wounded  land  I  had  been  visiting,  and  what  of  it 
I  was  now  upon  my  way  to  visit.  All  his  response 
was,  "Oui,  monsieur,"  but  this  was  no  mere  dull 
assent.  It  was  part  of  the  same  pattern  conveyed  by 
the  quiet  words  of  the  lady  at  Noyon,  "Others  have 
gone  further":  understanding  acceptance  of  irrep- 
arable loss  and  outrage,  understanding  resolve  that 
the  dead  past  must  not  kill  the  living  present,  or  the 
future.  Such  was,  in  its  depths,  the  French  state  of 
spirit  as  I  found  it  and  felt  it  everywhere ;  a  state  as 
noble  and  adequate  for  the  emergency  of  peace  as 


A   GLIMPSE   OF   THE   POILU         115 

their  state  of  spirit  in  war-time  had  been  noble  and 
adequate  for  that  emergency. 

At  Claye  we  drew  up  for  the  poilu  to  get  out ;  and 
there  he  thanked  us  and  went  his  way,  leaving  me 
with  increased  perception  of  his  race.  The  threads 
of  this  perception,  gathered — some  of  them — forty 
years  ago  and  along  the  years  since,  but  gathered 
never  so  attentively  as  now  in  the  stress  of  what  had 
befallen  the  world  and  what  the  world  was  going  to 
do  about  it,  these  threads  spun  a  rich  texture  of 
reassurance.  In  that  damp  street  leading  to  the 
cathedral  at  Amiens,  my  none  too  cock-sure  opti- 
mism had  been  chilled  to  the  bone.  So  had  it  been 
chilled  at  times  along  the  roads  of  desolation,  and 
was  to  be  again,  along  more  such  roads.  But  always 
it  was  to  be  warmed  up  by  the  rich  texture  of  reas- 
surance. The  twin  supports  of  our  civilization  were 
England  and  France,  and  neither  was  likely  to  fall. 
You  could  kill  Frenchmen  by  the  million,  French 
houses  by  the  hundred  thousand,  French  fields  by  the 
square  mile,  you  could  disintegrate  machinery  and 
drown  mines  and  amputate  orchards;  France  her- 
self you  could  not  kill :  not  at  any  rate  by  the  atroci- 
ties of  war,  and  probably  not  even  by  the  imbecili- 
ties of  peace.  Reassurance  spun  a  vision  of  many 
poilus  returning  all  over  France  to  their  little  trades 
in  leather,  their  little  tillage  of  the  vine,  to  all  their 
little,  careful  industries;  and  many  women  resur- 
recting the  little  commerce  of  their  estaminets,  turn- 
ing their  deft,  courageous  hands  to  many  kinds  of 
resurrection;  and  everybody  practising  that  mas- 
terly thrift  which  leads  to  well-being,  just  as  surely 
as  our  American  wastefulness  leads  away  from  it. 


XI 


TRANSFUSION   FROM   AMERICA 

I  regretted  that  Claye  should  have  come  so  soon 
and  cut  me  off  from  further  contact  with  the  poilu; 
and  yet  perhaps  I  had  got  as  much  of  him  as  there 
was,  at  least  for  my  purposes  of  observation.  His 
more  personal  opinions  and  adventures,  had  he  dur- 
ing the  course  of  the  day  become  moved  to  impart 
them,  might  or  might  not  have  been  worth  hearing. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  coming  hours  would  have 
been  more  than  likely  to  shut  him  up  tight.  We  were 
headed  for  the  fields  where  our  own  soldiers  had 
revealed  their  quality,  and  by  so  doing  had  also 
revealed  to  Foch  that  he  now  held  in  his  hand  every- 
thing which  he  needed  for  victory.  The  cup  of  the 
Allies'  vitality,  drained  horribly  and  repeatedly,  and 
repeatedly  filled  during  the  years  that  we  were  not 
there,  when  we  did  come  had  been  filled  the  last  few 
inches  that  it  lacked,  had  been  filled,  indeed,  over 
the  brim.  It  could  have  been  re-filled,  too,  as  often 
as  needed.  America,  by  the  time  of  the  Germans' 
Aisne  offensive,  was  at  last  prepared.  After  those 
unforgettable  months  of  extravagant  and  heart- 
breaking delay  and  incompetence,  America  was  ready 
to  pour  millions  after  millions  into  Europe.  She 
was  ready  to  erupt  armies  on  a  scale  more  gigantic 
than  history  had  ever  witnessed.  It  smote  the  Prus- 
sian like  the  tolling  of  a  knell.  He  did  his  best  to  lie 
to  his  duped  and  docile  Germany,  to  belittle  our 

116 


TRANSFUSION   FROM   AMERICA       117 

preparation.  But  in  his  heart  he  knew  better,  and 
upon  his  hopes  the  lights  burned  blue  and  went  out. 
More,  I  believe,  than  the  good  blows  we  struck,  did 
the  knowledge  that  we  were  there  deaden  the  Hun 
and  quicken  the  Allies.  Our  apparition  at  the  Marne 
was  like  an  instant  change  of  weather.  The  French 
moral  came  up  visibly,  like  a  parched  crop  beneath 
the  rain. 

" Where  are  you  going?"  asked  the  jaded  poilus 
of  our  jaunty  doughboys,  as  they  passed  each  other, 
the  ones  coming  back  exhausted,  to  rest,  the  others 
going  forward,  fresh  and  untested,  to  fight. 

''We're  going  to  stop  the  Huns,"  was  the  cheerful 
reply. 

"You're  going  to  hell,"  retorted  the  poilus. 

Do  any  of  them  remember  it  now,  I  wonder,  and 
the  day  on  which  they  said  it?  Orders  for  the  evacua- 
tion of  Paris  were  printed  and  ready. 

Yes,  we  were  on  our  way  eastward  through  Meaux, 
and  up  the  Marne,  and  across  the  Marne  at  Trilport, 
and  so  through  La  Ferte-sous-Jouarre  to  Chateau- 
Thierry.  Name  after  name  vibrated  for  me  with 
memories  both  personal  and  patriotic.  Personal,  be- 
cause I  had  seen  this  river  and  these  fields  and  woods 
at  the  last  moment  of  their  and  my  unsuspecting 
innocence.  I  had  enjoyed  them  in  the  company  of 
two  beloved  friends,  both  dead  before  the  war  ended. 
On  July  1st,  1914,  we  had  passed  through  this  exact 
region,  loving  its  fertile  tranquillity.  On  that  day  we 
had  seen  Reims,  Laon,  Soissons ;  and  looked  through 
beautiful  gates  of  country  places,  sequestered,  em- 
bowered; had  laughed  as  we  went  along  the  roads 
at  certain  names  on  sign-posts  right  and  left — Lizy, 


118  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Billy,  Charly,  Missy,  Silly;  had  laughed  more  at 
going  to  the  wrong  La  Ferte  in  search  of  the  Hotel 
de  l'Epee — La  Ferte  Milon; — and  had  after  some 
thirty  or  forty  kilometres  of  further  tranquil  loveli- 
ness, successfully  found  a  delicious  omelet  and  a 
desirable  bed  at  the  Hotel  de  l'Epee  in  the  right  La 
Ferte.  Much  ruin  now  scarred  La  Ferte-sous-Juarre. 
We  did  not  pass  the  Hotel  de  l'Epee.  Some  one 
during  the  war  sent  me  a  photograph  of  the  street, 
showing  the  hotel  portal  and  a  swollen  dead  horse 
lying  in  front  of  it. 

We  were  nearing  now  the  very  site  and  ground 
of  the  second  battle  of  the  Marne,  where  the  New 
World  saved  the  Old  World  and  where  at  the  first 
battle  of  the  Marne,  September  6th-12th,  1914,  the 
Old  World  had  saved  the  New.  On  May  the  27th, 
1918,  the  mailed  fist  was  lifted  for  what  proved  its 
last  blow.  In  March  it  came  near  to  striking  Amiens 
down.  On  a  day  during  those  weeks  when  the  Hun 
was  sweeping  westward,  the  British  soldiers  had 
been  told  by  their  general  that  they  were  fighting 
with  their  backs  to  the  wall.  Russia  had  gone  to 
the  perdition  that  she  is  still  in. 

"It  is  a  very  black  hour,"  said  a  lady  to  me  at 
dinner  in  Boston,  during  that  time. 

"The  darkest  hour  is  before  the  dawn,"  was  all 
that  I  could  find  to  reply. 

Hope  was  very  faint  all  over  the  Allied  World. 
News  spread  daily  at  which  the  heart  stood  still. 

We  came  to  that  point  where  you  do  not  speak  of 
what  you  and  all  whom  you  meet  are  thinking.  I 
remember  trying  to  turn  my  mind  away  from  what 
June  seemed  likely  to  bring  us.  One  shrank  from 
the  thought  of  June;  and  through  June  the  deadly 


TRANSFUSION   FROM   AMERICA      119 

footsteps  stalked  nearer  and  nearer.  Indeed,  hope 
was  very  faint.  The  eye  of  the  Hun  was  looking  at 
Paris.  Our  general  gave  Foch  every  man  he  could. 
The  3rd  Division,  new-trained  to  war,  was  brought 
in  haste  to  the  Marne.  Part  of  it,  the  motorized 
machine-gun  battalion,  able  to  make  greater  haste, 
came  first.  On  June  4th,  at  the  bridgehead  oppo- 
site Chateau-Thierry,  it  was<  successful.  A  French 
ingenieur  had  blown  up  the  first  part  of  the  bridge, 
but  the  Germans  could  still  cross,  and  our  boys  fin- 
ished the  work.  From  Montdidier  the  2nd  Division 
followed,  transported  by  every  quick  vehicle  avail- 
able to  help  block  the  Paris  road.  It  made  good. 
On  June  3rd  it  took  Bouresches  from  the  enemy  and 
held  his  best  Guards  off,  on  June  26th  Belleau  Wood 
followed.  In  their  race  for  honor  those  glorious 
Marines,  with  the  equally  glorious  brigade  of  Regu- 
lars under  General  Lewis,  struck  the  word  "stop" 
from  their  dictionary,  fighting  forward  ceaselessly 
until  July  10th.  Before  this  2nd  Division  was  re- 
lieved it  had  taken  Vaux.  Half  of  our  Second  Corps 
was  brought  from  the  British  area,  and  two  of  the 
five  divisions  were  added  to  those  already  standing 
between  the  enemy  and  Paris. 

We  at  home  were  too  far  away  to  feel  clearly  the 
significance  of  these  bright  preludes  during  June, 
and  our  hope  did  not  yet  revive.  The  dark  hour 
still  spread  over  us.  But  all  the  while  our  troops 
were  pouring  thicker  and  thicker  into  Europe,  and 
those  in  command  there  knew  what  this  meant;  knew 
that  they  had  an  endless  stream  of  young  blood  to 
use — young  blood  which,  if  untried,  was  also  untired. 
That  was  the  great  fundamental  magic  of  the  touch 
our  hand  laid  upon  the  Allies ;  the  touch  of  freshness 


120  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

upon  weariness.  In  mid-July  parts  of  the  42nd  Di- 
vision, facing  the  Germans  east  of  Reims,  blocked 
them  there,  while  four  companies  of  the  28th  Divi- 
sion on  the  right  flank  of  this  offensive  opposed  the 
on-coming  invaders.  Look  at  the  map  of  the  Marne 
between  Chateau-Thierry  and  Dormans.  That  is 
where  the  invaders  succeeded  in  crossing  the  river — 
a  farthest  fling  or  splash  of  the  tide  rising  to  engulf 
Paris,  a  sort  of  Pickett's  charge  at  Gettysburg.  Just 
east  of  Chateau-Thierry,  the  very  first  name  on  the 
south  bank  of  the  stream  is  Chierry.  From  this 
little  spot  run  a  finger  up  the  river  and  round  its 
bend  there  to  Mezy,  and  then  beyond,  opposite  Jaul- 
gonne.  Between  these  three  little  places  it  was  that 
the  3rd  Division  held  the  south  bank  of  the  Marne. 
The  ponderous  power  of  the  advancing  Hun  was 
pressed  and  driven  against  this  line; — his  infantry 
in  formidable  number,  supported  by  artillery  and 
screened  by  smoke.  Here  one  regiment  of  that  3rd 
Division,  though  flanked  on  both  wings  by  Huns  who 
had  got  over,  stopped  them  in  front.  These  Ameri- 
cans met  attacks  from  three  directions,  tangled  up 
two  German  divisions,  and  took  six  hundred  pris- 
oners. This  was  a  day  that  had  to  be  saved;  they 
saved  it  with  their  sweat,  with  their  blood,  with  their 
death.  Then  in  the  weeks  following,  our  soldiers 
turned  to  spirits  of  wild  battle,  flung  clothes  off, 
gleamed  among  the  hills,  attacked,  pursued,  beat  flat 
the  Huns  like  rattlesnakes.  "The  Terribles"  is  the 
name  that  a  French  officer  gave  our  32nd  Division, 
as  he  watched  it  taking  Juvigny. 

This  Aisne  offensive,  launched  by  the  Germans 
on  the  27th  of  May,  by  mid- July  bulged  deeply  into 
the  invaded  ground.    It  was  the  third  pocket  dug 


TRANSFUSION   FROM   AMERICA      121 

in  the  Allies '  front  by  Ludendorff  that  spring.  First 
had  come  the  centre  pocket  of  the  Somme,  dug  to 
Amiens  in  March  and  April;  next  the  right  flank 
pocket  of  the  Lys,  dng  to  the  north  in  April,  towards 
Calais ;  and  now  this  last,  the  beginning  of  the  end, 
at  the  Marne,  dug  towards  Paris.  The  change  came 
between  July  15th,  when  the  42nd,  28th,  and  3rd 
Divisions  were  engaged,  and  July  20th.  After  that 
while  the  3rd  Division  was  pushing  the  enemy  away 
from  the  Marne,  and  he  was  falling  back  beyond  the 
Chateau-Thierry-Soissons  road  before  the  attack  of 
the  1st  Corps;  and  while  the  42nd  Division  was 
fighting  through  the  Foret-de-Fere  on  its  way  to  the 
Ourcq ; — in  fact,  during  the  last  ten  days  of  July  and 
first  days  of  August  that  saw  these  divisions  of  ours 
help  the  French  crowd  the  enemy  back  from  their 
bulge,  back  from  the  Marne  to  the  Vesle  and  the 
Aisne,  the  change  before  the  dawn  grew  into  the 
dawn  itself. 

In  celebrating,  and  most  fitly  celebrating  our  own 
part  in  this,  let  us  take  great  care  lest  we  forget  that 
we  did  not  do  it  alone.  It  is  such  forgetting  that  has 
done  us  injury  in  the  hearts  of  the  English  and 
French.  Books  have  been  written,  mere  vulgar  yelps 
of  brag,  from  which  you  might  think  that  we  alone 
had  been  there  at  that  second  battle  of  the  Marne. 
The  French  had  six  or  seven  divisions  to  our  five 
during  the  fifteen  days  when  the  Hun  armies  of  von 
Mudra  and  von  Boehm  were  squeezed  out  of  their 
Marne  pocket. 

For  me,  July  the  18th  will  always  seem  the  day 
when  the  change  passed  like  a  spell  over  our  coun- 
try. That  is  the  day,  too,  when,  as  I  see  it,  the 
decisive  operation  in  moral  surgery  took  place.    In 


122  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

January,  in  a  great  hospital  near  Washington,  I  had 
sat  listening  to  wounded  officers  in  bed  tell  of  that 
day,  and  of  the  night  of  rain  preceding  it.  Some  of 
them  would  never  be  whole  again,  and  they  knew  it. 
All  were  young  and  none  complained.  Two  enlisted 
men  complained  to  me  out  of  all  that  I  saw — and 
these  two  had  never  been  to  France. 

"We  have  friends  in  Chicago,"  said  one  of  the 
officers,  jokingly  of  himself  and  a  comrade  in  the 
next  bed.  "We  are  going  to  get  two  street  corners. 
I'm  to  sell  papers,  and  he'll  sell  shoestrings  and 
pencils. ' ' 

As  we  played  cards,  or  in  other  ways  killed  time, 
they  told  me  of  the  road  they  came  through  the 
Foret-de-Villers-Cotterets ;  of  the  great  rain  and 
thunder;  of  the  mud;  of  the  five  parallel  tides  of 
traffic  going  one  way  or  the  other  along  the  road ;  of 
the  heavy  trucks  lurching  and  sticking  in  the  slanted, 
mushy  sides  of  the  road;  of  the  vast  silence  before 
the  guns  opened,  when  the  rain  had  ceased  and  its 
drops  from  the  leaves  sounded  in  the  forest. 

In  company  with  chosen  French  divisions  and  the 
splendid  Black  Watch  (for  in  those  first  days  of  our 
initiation  it  was  not  yet  known  by  any  one  how  well 
we  were  going  to  fight)  our  1st  and  2nd  Divisions 
were  picked  out  for  the  work  of  the  Soissons  drive. 
Then  through  the  five  days  that  we  know,  the  1st 
Division  went  on,  not  to  hell,  but  through  it,  to  the 
heights  above  Soissons  and  the  village  of  Berzy-le- 
Sec,  which  it  took.  The  2nd  Division,  quick  at  its 
work,  in  two  days  was  in  front  of  Tigny.  Together 
they  had  captured  7,000  prisoners  and  more  than  100 
pieces  of  artillery.  Meanwhile,  our  26th  Division, 
with  the  167th  French  Division,  formed  a  pivot  be- 


TEANSFUSION   FROM   AMERICA      123 

tween  Chateau-Thierry  and  Bouresches,  until  the 
crooked  had  been  made  straight  in  the  battle-line 
farther  towards  Soissons.  Then  they  became  the 
marching  right  flank  of  a  greatly  stretched-out  move- 
ment, pivoting  near  Vauxbain,  by  Soissons,  and  by 
the  month's  end  the  Huns  had  been  pushed  back,  and 
their  bulge  chopped  short. 

And  what  of  the  poilus  who  had  said  that  word 
about  going  to  hell?  They  never  said  it  again.  At 
the  critical  moment,  when  hope  was  sinking  very  low, 
when  Parisians  were  to  be  told  to  pack  up  and  fly, 
the  New  World  appeared  at  hope's  bedside,  and  gave 
to  the  patient  its  strong,  young,  healthy  blood.  The 
transfusion  was  successful.  Hope 's  ebbing  life  came 
back  and  again  flowed  strong  and  steadfast.  So 
immediate  was  the  rebound  to  convalescence,  that 
the  patient  has  sometimes  forgotten  how  danger- 
ous the  illness  was. 

The  good  deed  of  our  American  divisions  will  glow 
through  the  pages  of  history,  and  our  children  in  the 
years  to  come  will  say  the  names  of  Chateau-Thierry, 
Soissons,  Reims,  as  we  were  saying  them  in  our 
streets  through  those  summer  days  of  1918. 

Here  is  the  tale  of  the  "Event,"  of  the  transfu- 
sion, told  from  the  mouths  of  Frenchmen.  They 
called  our  coming  in  the  "Event"  in  those  days.  On 
the  4th  of  June  while  darkness  still  spread  over 
our  world,  Clemenceau  thus  spoke  the  grim  truth 
aloud:  "Exhaustion  has  set  in,  enormous  with  in- 
credible losses  for  the  English  army,  and  formidable 
and  perilous  for  the  French.  Our  available  forces 
are  spent,  but  the  Americans  are  coming  in  for  the 
deciding  stroke.  ...  It  remains  for  the  living  to 
carry  out  the  splendid  work  of  the  dead."    On  the 


124  NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 

8th  of  August  General  Petain  said  to  his  troops: 
"  The  invader  falls  back.  His  moral  totters.  Yester- 
day I  told  you,  'Abnegation,  patience,  yonr  comrades 
are  coming.'  I  tell  you  today,  'Doggedness,  bold- 
ness, and  you  will  force  victory.'  "  Between  these 
two  dates  the  comrades  had  come,  the  " Event"  had 
happened,  the  great  transfusion  had  taken  place. 
Throughout  that  month  of  August,  transfusion  con- 
tinued; each  day  13,000  more  Americans  set  foot 
upon  French  soil,  and  by  autumn  we  numbered  al- 
most two  million. 


XII 


ludendorff 's  pocket 


At  La  Ferte-sous-Jouarre  we  left  the  river,  not 
to  see  it  again  until  dusk,  when  we  came  to  it  at 
Dormans  through  Ville-en-Tardenois  from  Reims. 
This  was  a  day  between  rivers :  the  Marne,  the  Ourcq, 
the  Vesle,  the  Aisne.  They  have  been  flowing 
through  great  events  these  many  centuries.  Great 
events  have  been  added  to  them ;  soldiers '  feet  from 
Michigan  and  Pennsylvania  and  all  our  states  have 
trodden  earth  where  Charles  the  Bold  and  Louis  the 
Eleventh  and  Joan  of  Arc  walked  once.  As  we  went 
to  Belleau  Wood  I  forgot  to  look  at  anything  for  a 
while.  Pride  in  our  Marines  who  wrenched  it  from 
the  pick  of  the  German  troops,  and  reminiscence,  and 
surmise,  all  made  such  a  blend  in  my  thoughts  that 
I  recall  nothing  clearly  of  what  was  said,  or  how 
the  villages  looked,  or  the  fields,  until  we  came  to 
Belleau  Wood. 

Here  we  got  out  and  walked  the  ground  over,  and 
listened  to  the  words  of  the  young  captain  who  had 
been  detailed  at  37,  Eue  de  Bassano  to  be  our  escort. 
He  had  fought  here  himself,  and  he  showed  us  the 
positions  and  told  us  the  course  of  the  action.  Fol- 
lowing where  his  finger  pointed,  I  looked  across  a 
valley  from  the  ridge  we  stood  on  to  another  ridge, 
where  he  was  saying  the  enemy  had  been  at  a  certain 
stage.  We  were  at  the  edge  of  some  not  very  thick 
groves  which  stretched  along  it;  below  were  mead- 

125 


126  NEIGHBOBS   HENCEFOBTH 

ows,  green,  and  a  small  brook,  and  beyond  these, 
up  the  opposite  ridge,  more  thin  groves;  and  the 
sun  was  shining  pleasantly. 

"It  makes  me  think  of  the  Huntington  Valley  a 
little, ' '  I  mused,  half  aloud. 

"So  it  does,"  said  the  young  officer. 

"Then  you  have  seen  that  country  near  Philadel- 
phia V 

"Yes." 

Blue  flowers  were  growing  about  among  the 
thickets  where  we  explored.  War  had  been  raging 
when  they  last  grew  here.  Spring  was  now  coming 
fast,  had  made  visible  advance  since  that  first  day 
when  we  had  passed  the  roasted  aeroplane  in  the 
field  and  first  entered  the  great  silence.  But  neither 
spring  nor  the  hand  of  man  had  done  much  yet  to 
cover  or  remove  the  traces  of  war.  Among  the  blue 
flowers  minenwerfer  baskets  were  lying.  They  were 
empty  of  their  missiles,  and  most  of  the  hands  that 
had  hurled  them  were  knobs  and  knuckles  of  bone 
now.  The  dead  lay  about  here  so  thick  in  Belleau 
Wood  that  they  could  not  be  buried.  Bits  of  rotted 
leather  jutted  out  or  lay  flat  among  the  flowers,  and 
cartridges  unused,  quite  plentifully,  and  pieces  of 
firearms.  Now  and  then  our  officer  would  pick  up 
one  of  these  objects  out  of  the  scrap-basket  of  the 
battle,  and  identify  it  for  us  as  being  American  or 
German.  He  had  had  his  turn  in  hospital,  and  once 
had  gone  twenty-eight  days  without  removing  his 
clothes.  As  we  peered  and  stooped  through  the 
thickets,  human  bones  among  the  new  flowers  and 
the  old  last  year's  matted  leaves  would  stir  and  twitch 
like  dead  branches,  disturbed  by  our  tread.  In  a 
pair  of  old  shoes  in  one  muddy  place,  the  bony  feet 


LUDENDORFF'S   POCKET  127 

still  stuck,  German  feet ;  our  captain  knew  them  by 
the  make  of  the  shoe. 

"It's  the  young  generation  at  home  who  ought  to 
know  about  all  this,"  I  exclaimed.  "Can  the  old 
profit  by  its  meaning?  They're  trying  to  forget  the 
war,  and  Belgium,  and  everything,  already.  Just 
as  most  adult  Germans  will  die  under  the  influence 
of  forty  years  of  Prussian  poison,  believing  Germany 
was  invaded  and  fought  a  war  of  defence,  so  most 
Americans  over  forty  will  die  drilled  in  the  myth 
that  the  United  States  is  a  law  unto  itself,  like  a 
comet  in  space,  and  can  live  in  a  weather  of  its  own 
unaffected  by  the  storms  in  the  rest  of  the  world. 
That's  an  idea  which  will  send  us  shortly  to  a  back 
seat,  if  we  don't  get  rid  of  it.  At  least,"  I  concluded, 
"I  can  tell  the  boys  at  St.  Paul's  School  something 
about  this  devastated  region." 

"Are  you  a  St.  Paul's  boy?"  said  the  captain. 
"I  went  there  too." 

Though  I  had  heard  his  name,  of  course,  when  he 
had  been  introduced  to  us  in  the  Rue  de  Bassano, 
this  had  not  then  suggested  his  identity.  I  asked  it 
now.  His  father  had  come  from  my  town,  he  had 
gone  to  my  school,  I  knew  most  members  of  his 
family,  one  of  my  particular  friends  was  his  favorite 
aunt.  None  of  these  things  had  made  us  known  to 
each  other.  We  old  St.  Paul's  boys  met  first  beside 
a  couple  of  German  feet  sticking  in  the  mud,  in  Bel- 
leau  Wood,  in  the  land  of  the  Marne,  and  the  Ourcq, 
and  the  Vesle,  and  the  Aisne ;  not  so  far  from  where 
Joan  of  Arc  crowned  the  Dauphin  in  1429;  not  so 
far  from  where  a  synod  compelled  Abelard  to  burn 
his  books  in  1121 ;  not  so  far,  either,  from  where  they 
had  chased  Attila  and  his  Huns  away  in  451.    His 


128  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Pennsylvania  feet  had  been  chasing  another  Attila 
and  his  Hnns  away  in  1918 ;  and  here  were  the  feet 
of  a  Hun  that  hadn't  been  able  to  run  off. 

And  so  to  Chateau-Thierry  down  the  hill,  and  up 
the  hill  through  Verdilly,  Epieds,  Beauvardes,  graz- 
ing the  Foret  de  Fere,  through  which  our  26th  Divi- 
sion, not  a  year  ago,  had  fought  its  way  to  the  Ourcq. 
By  that  time,  July  24th  to  27th,  those  boys  had 
learned  the  trick  of  bird-nesting  for  machine  guns. 

"Kamerad!" 

Thus  had  a  German  non-com  addressed  the  cap- 
tain in  a  wood,  just  after  killing  most  of  his  men, 
and  just  before  perceiving  that  he  himself  was  going 
to  be  sent  after  them. 

"I  thought  'Kamerad'  was  too  easy  to  say  then," 
explained  our  captain.  By  that  remark  we  under- 
stood the  fate  of  the  non-com. 

It  is  said  that  our  men  after  Seicheprey,  where 
first  they  took  German  prisoners,  behaved  to  them 
much  as  they  might  behave  to  curiosities,  to  wild 
things  caught  alive  when  hunting,  almost  as  some- 
thing to  play  with.  Later,  they  saw  some  of  their 
own  comrades  whom  the  Germans  had  captured  and 
sent  back  with  mutilations  made  in  Germany  ex- 
pressly for  America.  After  that  they  did  not  play 
with  their  prisoners. 

Soon  after  the  Foret  de  Fere,  we  came  to  Fere-en 
Tardenois,  and  I  began  to  mark  my  map  with  a  cross 
against  each  place  that  was  in  ruins.  Today  pat- 
terns of  crosses  wind  over  it,  east  and  west  and  north 
and  south,  tracing  the  kilometres  of  ruin  that  we  saw 
beneath  the  great  silence.  Once  amid  all  this,  and 
only  once  that  I  remember,  a  train  of  trucks  stand- 
ing by  some  litter  left  by  battles,  served  as  a  sign 


LUDENDORFF'S   POCKET  129 

that  we  were  not  the  only  living  beings  who  surveyed 
this  valley  of  extinction.  Smoke  rose  quietly  from 
the  engine,  a  little  stream  that  must  have  been  the 
Ourcq,  or  some  tributary,  flowed  placidly  near  by. 

I  was  curious  about  Laon,  and  anxious  to  see  that 
cathedral  with  my  own  eyes.  Had  it  suffered?  Did 
it  still  exist?  Soissons  had  suffered  greatly.  Our 
papers  had  referred  to  that,  but  about  Laon  I  had 
never  seen  a  word  in  them.  It  lay  north  beyond  the 
Chemin  des  Dames,  on  a  high  ridge,  above  its  steep 
town,  visible  from  a  great  way  off,  very  defenceless. 
It  had  been  a  Hun  headquarters.  Fierce  fighting 
had  gone  on  not  far  from  it  in  the  days  of  the  Chemin 
des  Dames,  and  the  Hindenburg  Line,  when  the  Huns 
were  retiring.  Indeed,  fighting  had  never  ceased  in 
this  neighborhood. 

Laon  was  a  gem  among  cathedrals,  a  little  master- 
piece by  itself,  touched  by  the  hand  of  Italy,  with  a 
Virgilian  charm  and  grace  shining  among  its  ex- 
quisite aisles.  We  went  on  therefore  to  Laon,  after 
seeing  Soissons  and  the  Chemin  des  Dames  near 
Malmaison.  The  town  was  intact,  and  so,  save  for 
one  now  well-known  injury,  was  the  beautiful  church. 
How  had  it  come  to  escape? 

Before  Laon  was  hurt,  save  for  the  one  tower,  the 
Germans  striding  southwestward  from  Charleroi 
during  the  late  days  of  August  1914,  took  it,  and  it 
remained  theirs,  and  became  a  headquarters.  Natu- 
rally they  spared  it.  Within  the  new  map  of  a 
Greater  Germany,  representing  that  empire  after 
a  German  peace,  Laon  was  included.  In  the  fall  of 
1918  the  Germans  had  to  abandon  the  city,  and  their 
leave-taking  was  hasty.  They  had  insufficient  time 
to  blow  it  up,  as  they  had  blown  up  Peronne  and  its 


130  NEIGHBOKS   HENCEFORTH 

fellow- victims,  and  thus  retard  France's  commercial 
recuperation  by  one  more  piece  of  wanton  and  scien- 
tific destruction.  But  they  left  agents  behind,  and 
bombs  and  mines,  and  unluckily  for  German  hopes, 
the  French  came  into  Laon  and  found  the  agents 
with  the  bombs  not  as  yet  set  off.  On  the  13th  of 
October,  General  Mangin,  who  through  the  three  pre- 
ceding days  had  been  crashing  forward  to  the  north, 
first  across  the  Aisne  at  (Euilly,  and  next  across 
the  Chemin  des  Dames  and  the  dominating  table- 
land of  Craonne  into  actual  sight  of  Laon,  entered 
that  town  at  half-past  three  in  the  afternoon.  He 
was  borne  up  its  steep  hill  by  a  crowd,  not  of  traitors 
or  agents,  but  of  Frenchmen,  the  tears  of  joy  on  their 
cheeks,  the  strains  of  the  Marsellaise  upon  their  lips. 
The  tri-color  had  been  floating  from  the  cathedral 
since  eleven.  After  four  years  of  exile,  the  great 
church  with  its  clustering  town  at  its  feet  had  come 
back  to  its  own. 

We  descended  its  hill  and  soon  were  again  out  of 
the  zone  of  life  and  within  the  zone  of  death. 
Through  the  forenoon,  our  journey  had  been  along  a 
part  of  the  bottom  and  west  seam  of  the  pocket  which 
Ludendorff  had  begun  on  the  27th  of  May,  1918, 
to  dig  to  the  Marne,  with  the  mirage  of  Paris  in  his 
eyes.  Now  for  a  while  we  followed  the  east  seam 
of  the  pocket.  The  high  plain  of  Craonne  through 
centuries  of  war  had  been  a  key  unlocking  doors 
of  communication  between  adjacent  territories  of 
France.  Here,  after  he  had  been  pushed  back  in 
1914  at  the  first  battle  of  the  Marne,  the  German  had 
created  his  Siegfried  position.  Deep  dips  in  the  land 
and  the  wooded  undulations  had  been  wrought  into 
a  bulwark  dense  with  underground  communications 


LUDENDORFF'S   POCKET  131 

and  thick-planted  guns.  And  here  the  Crown  Prince 
with  his  two  armies  of  von  Boehm  and  von  Below 
had  started  his  share  of  the  enterprise  at  one  in  the 
morning  with  all  the  shells  and  gases  and  poisons 
that  German  invention  had  placed  at  his  disposal. 
At  one  o  'clock  that  morning  of  May  27th,  had  begun 
that  bad  news  which  we  had  to  read  for  so  many 
days.  It  was  only  eleven  months  ago.  On  the  map 
I  looked  at  the  names  of  the  places  that  were  coming 
on  our  road,  or  that  lay  near  to  it  on  one  side  or  the 
other:  Juvincourt  on  the  little  river  Miette — we 
should  presently  cross  between  it  and  La  Ville-aux- 
Bois.  We  went  through  Corbeny :  Craonne  was  just 
off  to  our  right.  At  eleven-twenty  that  morning 
eleven  months  ago,  the  delighted  Kaiser  had  arrived 
at  a  convenient  high  place,  close  to  where  we  were 
now,  to  watch  in  the  splendid  sunny  weather  the 
armies  of  his  boys  Fritz  and  William,  and  all  his 
other  armies,  battering  their  way  southward,  even 
across  the  Aisne,  digging  the  pocket  which  was  to 
reach  the  Marne. 

"William,"  he  telegraphed  to  William's  mother, 
"has  today  attacked  the  British  and  French.  .  .  . 
Fritz  was  one  of  the  first  to  reach  the  Aisne.  .  .  . 
God  has  granted  us  a  splendid  victory  and  will  help 
further.' ' 

1  *  My  soul  is  torn, ' '  he  had  written  his  Cousin  Aus- 
tria early  in  the  war,  "but  everything  must  be  deliv- 
ered to  fire  and  blood,  men,  women,  children,  and  the 
old  must  be  killed,  not  a  tree  nor  a  house  must  be 
left  standing." 

He  had  written  that  to  Francis  Joseph  at  a  time 
when  the  general  American  mind  still  disbelieved 
that  such  things  as  it  was  reading  daily  in  the  news- 


132  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

papers  could  be.  On  August  16th,  1914,  as  Foch  with 
the  9th  Army  was  facing  the  advance  upon  Rethel 
by  von  Hausen  and  his  army,  a  German  cyclist  upset 
himself  in  the  street  of  Gue  d'Ossus.  Immediately, 
recorded  an  officer  of  the  178th  Saxon  Regiment,  in 
his  diary: 

"We  burned  the  village  and  drove  the  inhabitants 
into  the  flames." 

As  we  went  over  the  seven  kilometres  from  Cor- 
beny  to  Berry-au-Bac,  the  land  changed  from  being 
a  skeleton  into  being  the  dust  of  skeletons.  It  lay 
dead,  chalk- white,  blasted  and  stark;  not  a  blade  of 
grass,  nothing  but  extinction.  Along  the  west  seam 
of  the  pocket  we  had  seen  many  poppies.  These  red 
flowers  hid  the  truth  that  was  behind  them:  human 
flesh ;  then  crows  in  black  swarms ;  then  red  poppies 
— this  had  been  the  rotation  of  war-crops  on  the 
Aisne.  Here  along  the  east  seam  we  saw  not  even 
poppies,  but  only  the  white  sterile  chalk.  Over  this 
ground  on  May  27th,  1918,  the  German  offensive  had 
broken  like  a  flood  from  a  dam.  It  had  rolled  down 
from  the  highland  and  reached  the  Aisne,  artillery 
following  infantry.  Nothing  had  withstood  it.  The 
German  officers  whistled  as  they  walked  with  their 
canes  in  their  hands.  During  the  afternoon  it  had 
been  the  same  on  the  west  side.  Three  French  battal- 
ions had  been  surrounded  and  engulfed  in  the  Foret 
de  Pinon.  Carrier  pigeons  brought  the  last  message 
from  them,  sent  about  two  o  'clock  the  next  morning : 

"The  three  last  men  of  the  three  battalions  have 
just  surrendered.' ' 

Whilst  these  had  been  holding  out,  the  flood  poured 
on:  five  divisions  against  one  French,  the  61st;  ten 
against  the  22nd;  six  against  the  21st;  from  the 


LUDENDORFF'S   POCKET  133 

Kaiser's  post  to  Berry-au-Bac,  eight  against  two. 
That  is  the  way  it  came.  The  outnumbered  French 
and  the  tired  English,  still  unrested  from  their  ex- 
haustion of  the  earlier  weeks,  gave  way  hour  after 
hour.  They  lost  not  the  Aisne  only,  they  were  pushed 
beyond  the  Vesle  this  first  day.  The  next  was  like 
it.  Fismes  went.  The  Germans  came  up  on  the 
wide  land  of  Tardenois.  Soissons  burned  and  went 
down.  Fere-en-Tardenois  followed  it.  By  the  30th 
the  Germans  had  dug  to  the  Marne  at  Jaulgonne. 
Here  our  2nd  Division  came  into  it.  Over  all  France 
wires  trembled  with  messages.  Our  Americans  at 
their  Jonchery  munition  depot  did  not  keep  the  holi- 
day on  Decoration  Day  for  which  they  had  made 
ready;  men  who  had  gone  to  Chaumont  to  celebrate 
it  were  called  back.  A  message  to  Jonchery  set 
them  making  ready  instead  for  a  train  of  trucks 
hastening  here  from  Dijon.  These  arrived  and  were 
loaded  all  through  the  night.  The  electric  lights 
shone  upon  the  warehouses  and  by  their  gleam  the 
shells  were  lifted  into  the  trucks  backed  up  close  to 
the  warehouses.  Then  some  fifty  started  west  in 
a  long  winding  train  on  the  road  to  Meaux. 

Bad  news  still  darkened  our  world ;  not  many  could 
have  then  perceived  the  dangerous  thing  that  Luden- 
dorff  was  doing,  hypnotically  lured  by  the  mirage  of 
Paris.  In  digging  his  pocket  he  had  gone  in  through 
a  gate,  so  to  speak,  and  the  gate-posts  were  still 
standing,  and  not  in  his  possession.  To  the  west  was 
the  Foret-de-Villers-Cotterets,  to  the  east,  the  Mon- 
tagne  de  Reims.  He  tried  desperately,  a  little  later, 
to  envelop  these  by  two  offensives.  Both  failed. 
Then  the  squeezing  out  began.  But  before  that  had 
set  in,  and  before  any  of  us  here  could  know  about 


134  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

and  understand  the  significance  of  those  gate-posts, 
we  heard  of  peasants  flying ;  of  towns  abandoned ;  of 
more  Germans  on  the  Marne  below  Chateau-Thierry 
and  Verneuil.  It  was  on  June  the  4th  that  the  force 
of  the  flood  at  length  had  spent  itself.  The  Kaiser 
never  sent  any  more  telegrams  like  that  he  had  sent 
on  the  27th  of  May.  For  ourselves,  as  I  remember  it, 
the  news  of  the  victory  at  the  bridge  of  Chateau- 
Thierry  on  that  4th  of  June  was  the  brightest  we 
had  heard  for  a  long  while — and  not  so  very  bright  at 
that:  only  a  spark  in  the  night,  but  a  spark  struck 
by  that  splendid  action  of  the  7th  Machine  Gun  Bat- 
talion of  our  3rd  Division,  which  arrived  after 
twenty-four  hours  on  the  road  and  thirty- six  with- 
out sleep,  and  made  the  name  Chateau-Thierry  as 
immortal  for  us  as  Concord  and  Lexington.  Clemen- 
ceau  spoke  on  that  day: 

"Our  available  forces  are  spent,  but  the  Ameri- 
cans are  coming  in  for  the  deciding  stroke.  ...  It 
remains  for  the  living  to  carry  out  the  splendid  work 
of  the  dead." 

The  dead!  Almost  as  thick  and  deep  along  this 
road  from  Laon  to  Reims  as  along  our  road  in  the 
terrible  land  of  the  Somme,  must  the  dead  have  been 
heaped.  It  was  written  all  over  the  face  of  the  region. 
It  was  to  be  read  not  alone  through  the  sight  of  a 
great  cemetery  which  we  saw  to  our  right;  to  look 
at  the  mere  earth  itself  was  enough.  The  earth  here 
had  died  in  torment.  I  can  evoke  the  vision  of  its 
twisted  corpse  today.  White,  dislocated,  crumbled, 
distorted,  it  was  fearful  to  see,  even  for  us  who  had 
seen  so  much.  I  stared  up  at  a  sort  of  hill.  I  had 
passed  this  very  way  on  the  1st  of  July,  1914.  I 
could  no  more  have  recognized  the  spot  than  you 


LUDENDORFF'S   POCKET  135 

could  recognize  a  dead  man  who  had  been  lying  out 
in  the  open  for  a  year.  Him  you  have  to  identify 
by  something  he  wore  or  carried ;  a  ring,  a  knife,  or 
his  teeth.  Well,  I  suppose  that  I  could  have  stood 
here,  studied  the  canal,  or  the  river,  or  the  relation 
of  one  to  the  other,  and  then  asked :  "  Is  it  possible 
this  can  be  Berry-au-Bac?"  Of  the  town  there  was 
nothing  left  at  all.  Of  the  charming  country  all  along 
this  way,  the  quiet  fields,  the  groups  of  trees  I  re- 
membered, nothing  was  left.  This  ancient  doorway 
between  the  Ardennes  and  the  Isle  de  France  was  a 
shrivelled,  gaping  mouth.  The  pastures,  once  so 
calm,  were  flung  up  into  shapes  white  and  wild,  like 
a  herd  of  screaming  ghosts  petrified  to  silence  sud- 
denly as  they  crouched  and  gesticulated.  The  hill 
at  which  I  stared  may  have  been  there  before,  or  it 
may  have  been  heaved  up  by  the  mine  explosion 
that  engulfed  many  lives  here  and  left  a  crater  which 
looked  more  like  the  work  of  natural  convulsion  than 
the  handicraft  of  man.  White  clay  now  seemed  to 
form  the  substance  of  this  hill,  steep,  brittle,  rough, 
corrugated  by  violence,  like  every  foot  of  the  sur- 
rounding country.  Nothing  was  growing  there  then, 
and  it  is  one  of  the  regions  where  nothing  is  growing 
yet.  Beneath  its  surface,  among  the  dust  and  bones, 
lie  the  bulb  roots  of  death,  the  unexploded  shells. 
These  are  sown  in  all  the  battle-grounds  of  France. 
Until  they  are  gone,  no  farmer  ploughing  his  field 
can  be  sure  that  he  will  reach  the  end  of  any  furrow 
alive. 

After  Berry-au-Bac  we  went  on  through  the  waste 
that  continued  for  eight  miles  or  so,  and  ceased 
shortly  before  we  came  to  Reims. 


XIII 


THE   GREAT   SHRINE 


On  this  May  evening  of  1919,  we  had  to  thread 
our  way  through  Kehns  as  through  a  labyrinth  where 
all  roads  but  one  led  to  nothing.  A  wrong  turn  right 
or  left  in  this  place,  where  more  than  one  hundred 
thousand  had  lived  five  years  ago,  would  have 
brought  us  to  a  stop  among  the  stony  heaps  of  their 
houses.  The  streets  into  which  these  houses  had 
been  flung  and  piled  were  slits  in  the  silence.  In 
that  other  German  war,  the  war  of  1870,  Reims  had 
been  made  the  seat  of  a  German  governor-general, 
and  had  paid  many  heavy  tolls  to  its  invaders.  I 
looked  upon  the  toll  it  had  paid  now,  as  slowly  and 
carefully  we  made  our  way  to  the  cathedral.  For 
this  sight  I  was  ready — as  ready,  that  is,  as  many 
pictures  and  descriptions  can  make  one.  We  all 
know  the  particular  spite  that  was  hurled  at  this 
monument,  and  why  it  was  so  hurled.  We  know  the 
denial  of  its  bombardment  by  the  ninety-three  Ger- 
man professors.  They  signed  a  denial  of  this  and 
the  other  crimes  committed  by  Germany  up  to  that 
time.  These  professors  had  the  choice  of  doing  this, 
or  of  losing  their  positions  and  having  their  careers 
broken  and  their  daily  bread  cut  off.  They  were  at 
the  mercy  of  one  man's  word,  their  emperor's.  We 
pay  a  high  price,  a  very  high  price,  for  democracy; 
but  it  is  not  quite  so  high  as  that  which  Germany 

136 


THE   GREAT   SHRINE  137 

paid  for  her  magnificent  material  order  and  well- 
being. 

When  the  Germans  found  that  their  purely  wanton 
destruction  of  what  was  France's  holiest  building 
had  turned  against  them  many  hearts  that  had  hith- 
erto been  neutral  or  in  doubt,  they  did  what  they 
always  do  in  such  cases.  It  happened  several  times 
during  the  war  that  the  effect  of  their  actions  upon 
the  outside  world  had  not  been  anticipated  by  them 
and  took  them  by  surprise.  Their  education  had 
never  led  them  to  suspect  that  their  own  standards 
were  behind  those  of  the  civilized  world.  Therefore 
their  battering  of  the  great  church  of  Reims,  which 
struck  the  civilized  world  as  being  what  Attila  might 
have  done  when  he  put  Reims  to  fire  and  sword  in  the 
5th  Century,  had  to  be  justified  in  haste.  We  know 
the  pretext  that  they  put  forward  a  trifle  too  late. 
It  was  explained  as  a  military  necessity.  It  was 
pretended  that  the  French  were  using  the  cathedral 
to  signal  from.  It  was  overlooked  that  they  used 
aeroplanes  for  this.  We  know,  too,  the  self-contra- 
dicting remarks  of  German  officers  upon  which  this 
excuse  was  based.  We  know  the  kind  of  shell  that 
was  found  embedded  in  the  walls — needlessly  heavy 
for  the  alleged  purpose.  The  world  knows  today  that 
the  Germans  meant  to  pound  the  cathedral  of  Reims 
to  dust  if  they  could,  because  it  had  been,  since  Joan 
of  Arc  had  the  Dauphin  crowned  there  in  1429,  the 
central  shrine,  the  place  of  prayer,  pilgrimage  and 
patriotism,  the  spot  of  all  most  sacred  and  dear  to 
France :  her  Independence  Hall,  her  Mount  Vernon, 
her  Liberty  Bell,  made  holy,  not  through  one  century 
like  ours,  but  through  seven.  It  had  seen  the  same 
seven  centuries  that  Amiens  had  seen,  often  drenched 


138  NEIGHBOKS   HENCEFORTH 

with  blood.  From  1328  to  1830,  almost  every  King 
of  France  had  been  crowned  here.  Its  great  bell, 
weighing  more  than  eleven  tons,  had  been  ringing 
for  festivals  and  rites  before  the  existence  of  our 
continent  was  known.  At  my  last  visit,  the  figure 
of  Joan  of  Arc  had  sat  on  her  horse  in  front  of  the 
church.  I  looked  for  her,  but  the  gallant  statue  was 
gone  and  its  place  was  vacant.  She  had  been  taken 
for  safety  elsewhere. 

No,  they  had  not  smashed  Reims  to  dust.  It  was 
here  to  be  seen,  and  would  be  seen  for  long  years  to 
come.  It  would  be  proudly  standing  when  those  who 
had  aimed  at  its  fall  were  dust  themselves.  It  was 
a  wreck,  its  roof  was  gone,  its  eyes,  the  glorious  win- 
dows of  stained  glass,  were  blind;  you  could  see 
through  into  its  broken  interior,  you  could  note  upon 
its  western  front  the  ravage  of  flame  and  shell:  the 
carving,  the  maimed  and  incinerated  army  of  saints 
and  kings  that  had  been  one  of  the  glories  of  the 
world,  bore  witness  to  the  intention  and  the  effort  of 
the  Hun. 

In  the  third  chapter  of  his  account  of  Germany, 
the  chapter  entitled  From  Kant  to  Hegel,  Heinrich 
Heine  made  a  prophecy,  and  this  is  a  part  of  it : 

"But  the  most  frightful  of  all  will  be  the  philoso- 
phers of  materialism.  .  .  .  The  philosophy  of  mate- 
rialism will  be  terrible  in  that  it  taps  the  elemental 
force  of  the  earth,  conjures  the  latent  powers  of 
tradition,  those  of  the  entire  Germanic  pantheism, 
in  which  it  arouses  that  lust  of  war  that  we  find 
among  the  ancient  Germans,  the  lust  of  combat  .  .  . 
for  combat's  sake. 

"To  a  certain  extent  Christianity  has  mollified 
this  brutal  battle  lust  of  the  Germans ;  to  destroy  it, 


THE   GREAT   SHRINE  139 

it  has  not  availed.  When  the  Cross,  that  talisman 
which  holds  it  now  in  curb,  comes  to  break,  then 
the  ancient  warriors'  ferocity  will  surge  afresh,  that 
mad  Berserker  frenzy  which  the  Norse  minstrels  are 
today  still  singing.  Then — and  the  day  will  come, 
alas ! — the  old  war  gods  will  get  up  from  their  fabled 
tombs  and  rub  the  dust  of  centuries  from  their  eyes. 
Thor  will  stand  erect  in  his  might  and  with  his  giant 
hammer  will  smash  the  gothic  cathedrals.  .  .  .  When 
you  hear  the  tumult  and  the  shouting,  be  on  your 
guard,  dear  neighbors  of  France.    .    .    ." 

Soon  after  the  bombing  of  Reims  cathedral,  this 
passage  began  to  be  remembered  and  quoted.  The 
rest  of  the  prophecy  is  equally  remarkable,  and  I  add 
it  here.    Heine  continues : 

"Do  not  smile  at  this  advice  even  though  it  is  given 
by  a  dreamer  ...  do  not  smile  at  a  fantastic  poet 
who  expects  the  same  revolution  in  the  world  of  facts 
that  has  occurred  in  the  intellectual  world.  Thought 
precedes  action  as  lightning  does  thunder.  Thunder 
in  Germany  is  quite  German:  it  is  not  very  lively, 
but  comes  rolling  slowly.  But  come  it  will ;  and  when 
you  hear  a  crash  like  no  crash  ever  heard  before  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  then  you  will  know  that  the 
German  thunder  has  culminated  at  last.  At  this 
noise  eagles  will  fall  dead  from  the  high  air  and  the 
lions  in  their  remotest  African  deserts  will  cringe  and 
slink  away  into  their  royal  lairs." 

At  about  that  time  Richard  Wagner,  the  last  Norse 
minstrel,  was  singing,  not  yet  of  mad  Berserker 
frenzy,  but  of  the  Flying  Dutchman,  having  been  led 
to  this  partly  by  certain  other  pages  written  by 
Heinrich  Heine.  People  then  alive  lived  to  see  this 
same  minstrel  singing  a  triumphal  march  to  that 


140  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

conqueror  of  France  in  1870,  that  Hohenzollern  whom 
Bismarck  then  made  Emperor  of  Germany;  the 
minstrel  was  also  writing  a  coarse  extravaganza,  a 
Berserker  insult  to  prostrate  France,  entitled  A  Ca- 
pitulation; he  had  also  reached  the  middle  of  his 
opera  Siegfried,  in  which  the  old  gods  were  brought 
out  of  their  fabled  tombs  and  sang  to  us  on  the  stage. 
Wotan,  Brunhilde,  Siegfried,  were  names  given  by 
Hindenburg  and  his  Berserkers  to  certain  of  their 
defence  lines  of  1914-18,  when  the  philosophers  of 
materialism  had  completed  their  work,  when  the  talis- 
man of  Christianity  had  broken  and  no  longer  curbed 
the  ancient  German  battle  lust,  when  the  creed  of 
blood  and  iron  had  been  systematically  and  scien- 
tifically substituted  for  the  creed  of  the  Cross,  and 
when  German  children  had  been  during  forty  years 
educated  backward  to  be  Berserkers.  When  Thor  in 
1914  smashed  Reims  with  his  giant  hammer,  Henry 
Heine  had  been  fifty-eight  years  in  his  grave,  Richard 
Wagner  had  been  in  his  for  thirty-one.  Heine  had 
made  his  prophecy  seventy-nine  years  before  the 
event.  fi 

With  Heine  and  Wagner  and  Hindenburg  in  mind, 
I  looked  at  the  smashed  glories  of  Reims.  What,  I 
wondered,  did  those  remarkably  righteous  persons, 
who  were  already  assuring  us  that  Germany  was  a 
tender  and  misrepresented  creature,  make  of  these 
facts?  I  thought  of  another  poet  also,  an  American, 
Louise  Driscoll  by  name,  who  sang  her  noble  lament 
over  the  cathedral: 

Men  planned  and  wrought 
And  set  fair  towers  against  a  flower-blue  sky. 
There  is  no  power  in  the  world  like  thought, 
And  beauty  wrought  with  prayer  can  never  die. 


THE    GREAT   SHRINE  141 

What's  lost  with  Reims? 
'Tis  Germany — a  land  we  used  to  know 
A  pleasant  land  of  songs  and  fairy  tales  .  .  . 
Where  did  they  go? 

What's  lost  with  Reims? 

The  soul  of  a  great  people,  blind,  betrayed. 

No  roaring  guns  tore  flesh  from  flesh  and  made 

A  desert  of  their  gardens,  yet  we  see 

The  desert  of  the  world  in  Germany ! 

Theodore  Botrel,  the  poet  of  the  poilus,  wrote  a 
sort  of  Litany  of  the  ruins : 

Jeune  bon  Dieu,  dans  la  creche 
Rajeunis  ton  eternite, 
Toi,  dont  la  tendre  loi  ne  preche 
Que  1 'amour  et  la  charite. 

Doux  Roi  du  plus  doux  des  Royaumes 
C'est  toi  que  nous  invoquons, 
Et  non  les  vieux  dieux  des  Guillaumes, 
Des  Attilas  et  des  Nerons. 

Par  Louvain,  par  Senlis  croulantes, 
Et  par  Reims  qui,  pres  de  mourir, 
Tends  vers  toi  ses  tours  suppliantes 
Comme  les  moignons  d'un  martyr; 

Par  notre  farouche  Endurance; 
Par  nos  otages  en  exil ; 
Jeune  bon  Dieu,  rends  la  France 
Justice  et  Gloire !   Ainsi  soit  il  !* 

*  "God  merciful  and  young  in  thy  manger  make  young  again 
thine  eternity,  Thou  whose  tender  law  doth  preach  but  love  and 
charity.  Gentle  King  of  Kingdom  gentlest,  Thee  it  is  we  invoke,  not 
the  old  gods  of  Kaisers,  Attilas,  and  Neros.  By  crumbling  Louvain 
and  Senlis,  and  by  Reims,  who  dying  lifts  to  Thee  her  suppliant 
towers  like  a  martyr's  stumps,  by  our  endurance  fierce  and  exiled 
hostages,  God  merciful  and  young  give  France  justice  and  glory. 
Amen." 


142  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"They  are  evacuating  Reims,"  wrote  a  young 
Frenchman,  a  boy  of  twenty-three,  to  his  godmother 
on  the  7th  of  April,  1917;  "it  is  very,  very  sad  to 
see.  Tonight  ten  conflagrations  were  throwing  whirl- 
winds of  reddened  smoke  two  hundred  metres  high, 
and  the  profiles  of  the  two  solemn  towers  were  cast 
darkly  against  the  flaming  heavens.  Sad  vehicles 
defiled  beneath  me,  generally  automobiles;  women 
and  children,  little  boys  in  their  black  aprons  as  if 
they  were  coming  from  school ;  furniture.  The  town 
burned  in  a  sort  of  calm,  as  in  submission  to  an 
inevitable  and  foreseen  phenomenon.  And  the 
towers,  with  a  look  of  eternity,  of  indestructibility, 
seemed  to  watch.  And  all  this  on  a  fine  night,  placidly 
lustrous  beneath  the  Pascal  moon." 

"There  is  no  power  in  the  world  like  thought 
And  beauty  wrought  with  prayer  can  never  die." 

That  is  what  the  towers  saw ;  Thor  could  not  smash 
it.  It  was  in  the  soul  and  mind  of  that  boy  as  he 
wrote  to  his  godmother,  nine  days  before  his  death 
on  the  battlefield.  He  wrote  other  letters,  there  is 
a  little  volume  of  them,  letters  to  his  father  and 
mother,  to  certain  other  elders,  and  to  intimate  com- 
rades of  his  own  young  generation.  With  his  soul 
and  mind  he  was  a  piece  of  that  France  essential  to 
us  and  civilization,  the  ultimate  France  of  the  spirit 
that  should  keep  our  respect  and  affection.  He  was 
the  modern  consequence  of  the  ancient  cathedral. 
The  same  race  had  built  them  both.  He  was  a  piece 
of  beauty  wrought  with  prayer — that  form  of  prayer 
which  is  constant,  noble  impulse  translated  constantly 
into  noble  action;  and  as  I  think  somehow  of  him 
and  Reims  as  belonging  spiritually  to  each  other,  I 


THE    GREAT   SHRINE  143 

place  here  not  in  the  order  of  their  writing  some 
few  sentences  from  his  letters  because  they  are  full 
of  that  thing  which  Thor  with  his  hammer  cannot 
smash. 

He  is  speaking  of  two  fellow-soldiers : 

"If  you  could  only  see  the  strange  life  we  lead, 
six  yards  underground.  ...  D  is  a  peasant.  X  has 
not  the  dashing  patriotism  of  D,  but  he  has  his  recti- 
tude and  loyalty  and  courage.  He  supplements  D's 
intellectual  patriotism  with  the  dignity  of  a  free 
man,  who  declines  to  accept  the  trespassing  of  an 
outsider  upon  his  own  concerns.  He  likes  to  be 
master  in  his  house  and  he  is  master  of  himself.  He 
does  not  like  fighting  but  goes  to  it  whole-souled  from 
self-respect.  He  has  supremely  the  sense  of  honor. 
He  is  the  peasant  aristocrat.' ' 

The  boy  was  a  student  of  medicine  with  four  terms 
to  his  credit  when  he  entered  upon  his  first  term  of 
military  service.  This  the  outbreak  of  the  war  cut 
short.  He  got  leave  to  go  to  the  front  in  the  ranks, 
and  not  as  a  hospital  aid.  He  fought  from  Charleroi 
to  the  Marne,  where  he  was  wounded.  He  writes  of 
himself : 

"Don't  imagine  that  any  thought  of  winning  dis- 
tinction entered  my  mind  when  I  took  the  step  I  was 
predestined  to  take.  Once  more,  the  place  of  a 
Frenchman  twenty-two  years  old  is  under  fire,  or 
with  those  who  are  going  there.  As  it  was  in  1870 
and  has  been  for  ever,  our  business  is  to  boot  the 
enemy  out  of  France.  I  took  my  part  at  the  Marne. 
My  place  now  is  with  those  who  carry  on.  It's  the 
task  of  my  generation.  You  '11  say  doctors  are  needed 
as  much  behind  as  at  the  front.  I  don't  want  to  be 
that  kind,  nor  the  kind  in  the  hospital  trains;  some 


144  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

of  us  are  needed  in  it.  I  couldn't  shake  hands  with 
G.  or  N.,  or  look  at  my  friends  in  the  eye.  I'm  ill  at 
ease  among  fathers  some  of  whom  have  sons  at  the 
front.  ...  I  want  to  escape  any  danger  purely  to 
learn  how  better  to  face  the  next.  The  living  must 
be  worthy  of  the  dead,  our  life  mustn't  give  their 
deaths  the  lie.  One  has  done  nothing  so  long  as 
anything 's  left  to  be  done.    .    .    . 

"We  must  win.  There's  no  question  of  knowing 
if  we  can  or  can  not,  or  if  we  shall  succeed  or  shall 
not.  We  must,  that's  all.  It  is  the  man  who  shall 
have  willed  victory  who  will  vanquish.  This  deter- 
mination, deep,  unconquerable,  intimate,  this  will  to 
vanquish,  each  of  us  must  have  it,  no  matter  what 
his  place  and  duty.  .  .  .  But  this  will  to  vanquish 
that  I  should  like  to  root  in  every  French  heart,  hi 
order  to  be  useful  must  stick  to  defined  aims,  else  it 
will  be  merely  a  vague  and  vain  aspiration.  .  .  . 
Work,  that  is'  the  word.  Work,  that  is  what  the 
enemy  has  been  doing  since  1871;  it  is  against  his 
work  that  our  dash  and  our  fine  courage  are  bruising 
themselves.    France  isn't  working  hard  enough." 

He  writes  from  hospital  to  a  friend: 

"The  German  is  alien  to  our  mentality  ...  his 
materialism  (he  calls  it  Deutschland  fiber  alles) 
stamps  everything,  stifles  every  noble  generous  in- 
stinct, everything  that  antiquity,  the  Renaissance, 
our  17th  and  18th  Centuries  planted  in  us  of  altruis- 
tic, humane,  disciplined  impulses,  the  whole  higher 
moral  level  that  distinguishes  us  from  the  ancestral 
brute  .  .  .  have  you  any  time  for  reading?  I'm 
going-  to  send  you  your  favorite  Musset  anyhow. 
You'll  always  find  a  minute  to  read  over  the  May 
Night.    It's  not  very  war-like,  but  beauty  in  no  mat- 


THE    GREAT    SHRINE  145 

ter  what  form  is  a  tonic  for  the  soul  and  lifts  the 
heart.  ..." 

He  writes  his  mother : 

"I'll  keep  your  letter  as  my  guide  through  the 
unforeseen,  and  try  to  show  myself  worthy  of  what 
you  think  of  me,  and  to  become  worthy  of  what  I 
would  exact  from  myself.  .  .  .  For  the  triumph  of 
justice  and  right  (though  these  may  be  merely  illu- 
sions) and  for  the  chastisement  of  the  greatest  col- 
lective crime  of  history,  many  tears,  many  drops  of 
blood  must  fall  .  .  .  the  generation  of  1914-15-16  will 
have  won  moral  grandeur,  the  thing  for  which  it  is 
worth  while  to  live  life.  .  .  . 

"What  a  beautiful  walk  I  took  yesterday!  I  fol- 
lowed an  infinity  of  different  paths  and  thus  greatly 
heightened  the  effect  of  emerging  upon  a  straight 
road  that  cuts  through  the  moist  and  mystic  heart 
of  the  forest  to  a  new  horizon.  ...  I'm  sure  that  to 
enrich  one's  inner  life  one  must  intensify  one's  ex- 
ternal life.  You  must,  so  to  speak,  gather  sensations 
to  nourish  thought  during  those  hours  when  external 
sensations  fail.  I  don't  suppose  you  know  how  a 
dynamo  works  f  Very  simply.  For  one  day  a  power- 
ful steam-engine  spins  the  dynamo  and  thus  generates 
the  electricity  which  is  stored.  Next  day  it  may  be 
the  other  way  round,  if  you  choose.  The  stored 
electric  energy  can  run  the  steam-engine.  Very  well. 
It 's  quite  the  same  with  the  dynamo  we  carry  within. 
If  we  desire  that  it  shall  in  our  dark  hours  illuminate 
our  life,  we  must  store  up  light  when  the  sun  shines. 
T  doubt  if  I  could  have  seen  any  beauty  in  the  land- 
scape yesterday  if  I  had  never  been  in  Switzerland. 
I'm  deeply  sure  this  applies  to  everything,  and  espe- 
cially to  the  things  of  the  heart.    But  if  I  start  on 


146  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

that  I'll  never  stop.  .  .  .  Fool  that  I  am!  I  was 
going  to  forget  to  tell  you  that  in  two  days,  very 
likely,  they  will  discharge  me  from  the  infirmary  and 
let  me  go  back  to  the  trenches.  .  .  .  The  joy  of 
meditation,  of  philosophizing,  is  a  terrible  siren  who 
breaks  careers  and  parches  strength.  She  must  be 
merely  an  episode.    Otherwise  the  man  is  lost.  .  .  ." 

In  hospital,  where  he  has  time  for  much  reading 
and  re-reading — Shakespeare,  Plutarch,  Voltaire,  La 
Fontaine,  the  Bible,  make  but  a  portion  of  it — he 
writes  his  intimate  friend: 

"Dismiss  your  idea  that  war  is  over  for  me.  My 
cure  will  take  long,  but  the  war  longer  still.  I've 
sent  you  Stendhal.  I  read  U Amour  in  order  to  talk 
it  over  with  a  young  Irish  girl  (but  alas !  those  things, 
when  one  is  doing  them  one  doesn't  discuss  them,  and 
when  one  discusses  them  one  doesn't  do  them,  oh, 
thrice  alas!).  When  shall  we  be  able  after  having 
sacrificed  to  Mars  to  return  to  the  temple  of  Venus  1 
When  can  we  resume,  dear  old  Maurice,  our  good 
confidences,  our  dreamings  by  the  Marne,  all  our 
friendship  of  yesteryear?  ...  As  to  my  foot,  doc- 
tors disagree.  Some  counsel  another  operation, 
others  disbelieve  in  it.  I  wish  I  could  at  least  rejoin 
my  headquarters  ...  or  else  be  in  the  zone  of  the 
armies.  Think  of  having  to  make  war  here  at  Vichy ! 
It's  a  heart-break.  ...  At  any  rate  I've  been  of 
some  use  here,  day  and  night  now,  these  eight  months. 
For  eight  days  I  had  charge  of  120  patients,  all  by 
myself.  .  .  .  There's  my  life.    I  blush  for  it.  .  .  ." 

To  his  father  he  writes : 

"I  don't  know  what  monstrous  aberration  of  mod- 
esty, what  imbecile  timidity  causes  one  to  open  his 
heart  to  strangers  only.  ...  A  son  ought  to  treat  his 


THE   GREAT   SHRINE  147 

father  as  something  different  from  a  preceptor.  .  .  . 
Many  feel  a  devoted  love  for  him  .  .  .  respect,  grati- 
tude; few,  I  believe,  think  of  making  their  father 
their  friend.  Why?  False  shyness,  and  then,  chil- 
dren have  no  such  notion  .  .  .  they  seek  pleasure 
comrades  rather  than  thought  comrades.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  the  notion  of  such  a  friendship  some- 
times makes  a  father  wistful,  it  isn't  for  him  to  begin, 
he  would  have  to  trespass  on  youth's  privacy;  such 
a  friendship  isn't  possible  unless  it  springs  of  its 
own  accord  from  the  wishes  of  the  child.  Dear 
father,  I  ask  you  to  be  my  friend.  We  are  so  abso- 
lutely made  to  get  on  together.  Between  us,  right 
in  the  family  circle,  simple  and  united,  nevertheless 
twenty  centuries  of  convention,  of  fashion,  of  con- 
trolling tradition,  had  piled  obstacles  between  two 
hearts  and  their  natural  expansion.  We've  never 
talked  openly  as  two  young  people  sometimes  talk 
together,  shrouded  in  the  dimness  of  a  room  or  in 
the  inviting  quietness  of  a  beautiful  night.  At  such 
a  time  trust  is  stirred  and  intimacy  follows  it.  One 
is  surprised  the  next  morning,  sometimes,  at  what 
one  has  been  moved  by  certain  influences  to  reveal 
to  a  companion.  That's  because  next  morning  the 
iee  has  formed  again,  the  ice  that  for  a  moment  was 
broken,  melted  by  the  warm  breath  of  friendship, 
and  the  conventional  chill  re-assumes  its  rights.  .  .  . 
And  since  it  is  to  my  stay  in  hospital  that  I  owe  this 
inspiration  about  a  change  in  our  relations,  I  bless 
my  illness.  ..."  (Here  for  three  pages  as  wonderful 
as  ever  came  from  the  pen  and  the  heart  of  a  son 
just  twenty-three,  he  tells  his  father  of  what  he  has 
read — from  Shakespeare  to  Anatole  France,  from 
Montaigne  to  Loti — during  these  months  in  hospital, 


148  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

lie  tells  him  of  his  thoughts,  of  his  character  and 
what  it  has  lacked  and  how  he  hopes  it  has  developed, 
and  then  he  continues) : 

4 'And  so  I  mean,  dear  father,  to  open  an  immense 
conversation  with  you,  guards  down,  in  which  I'll 
make  a  clean  breast  to  you  of  my  dreams  and  my 
enthusiasms.  I'll  reveal  my  aspirations,  my  moral 
and  my  worldly  ambitions,  my  still  halting  concep- 
tions about  the  huge  questions  I've  not  yet  thought 
enough  about.  We  '11  talk  of  men  and  acquaintances, 
of  life  and  death,  of  God  and  women,  or  rather,  of 
the  gods  and  Woman,  of  art  and  politics,  of  history 
and  the  wooded  slopes  of  the  Vosges,  of  medicine 
and  war,  of  everything  within  the  domain  of  thought. 
You'll  correct  my  inaccuracies,  I'll  revive  your  illu- 
sions. I'll  gain  weight,  you'll  regain  youth,  and  so 
you '11  really  be  my  father.  ..." 

This  French  boy  was  not  quite  twenty-one  when 
he  entered  the  war  at  its  outbreak.  During  three 
years  he  seems  to  have  been  in  almost  every  part  of 
it,  the  Somme,  the  Marne,  Champagne,  the  Argonne, 
and  to  have  seen  almost  all  the  sights  of  war  and  felt 
almost  all  its  sensations,  except  despondency.  If 
ever  he  felt  that  he  never  allows  it  to  appear. 

To  the  father  of  a  comrade  killed  at  Douaumont 
and  dearly  loved,  he  writes,  after  two  pages : 

"Listen,  sir,  this  letter  is  too  painful  for  you  to 
read.  I'll  cut  it  short.  But  I  must  all  the  same  tell 
you  that  the  sacrifice  of  your  son  is  not  wasted.  My 
first  feeling  was  of  discouragement,  of  disgust  at 
the  folly  of  slaughter  which  froths  over  the  earth. 
But  soon,  as  often  before,  the  lesson  of  sacrifice  rose 
out  of  it  for  me.  We  need  the  Scriptures  no  longer, 
the  story  of  Christ  teaches  nothing  actually,  now: 


THE    GEEAT    SHRINE  149 

to  learn  the  beauty  and  to  understand  the  neces- 
sity of  immolation  we  need  but  look  around  us.  Such 
examples  as  Andre  has  given  put  the  flabby  and  the 
timid  to  shame  and  uplift  and  strengthen  the  brave. 
.  .  .  The  battle  goes  forward  .  .  .  and  those  not  yet 
fallen  must  look  ahead  and  still  ahead,  until  their 
turn  shall  come.  ..." 

On  New  Year 's  Eve  of  the  year  that  his  turn  was 
to  come,  he  gave  a  supper. 

"My  party  was  a  grand  success.  I  had  sixteen 
guests,  and  later  two  who  arrived  at  11.30.  .  .  .  They 
proved  charming  and  greatly  enlivened  the  dawn  of 
the  present  year  with  their  songs  and  monologues. 
.  .  .  Pate  de  fois  gras,  roast  fowls,  green  peas,  salad, 
hot  chocolate,  plum-pudding,  a  litre  of  white  wine 
apiece,  decent  champagne,  coffee,  cigars.  I  was  able 
to  get  some  rum — not  so  easy! — just  enough  for 
lighting  the  plum-pudding.  A  little  before  midnight 
I  had  the  lights  put  out.  Then  as  the  clock  struck 
twelve,  the  pudding  was  brought  in,  garlanded  with 
blue  flame,  while  corks  popped  and  greetings  were 
exchanged.  The  Marseillaise  started  by  itself.  Very 
characteristic.  If  any  one  at  any  other  time  had 
started  the  national  song,  the  poilus  would  have 
booed  him  down;  but  they  felt  a  certain  solemnity 
in  the  moment,  in  spite  of  everything,  and  sang  the 
hymn  out  freely  and  joyfully.  .  .  .  This  morning  I 
got  to  bed  satisfied  at  having  done  something  for 
cheerfulness  and  merriment.  .  .  .  That's  an  impera- 
tive human  obligation  in  war-time.  .  .  ." 

Within  four  months  the  turn  came  for  this  boy. 
He  was  warned  not  to  keep  so  near  some  comrades 
he  stood  ready  to  care  for  should  they  be  hit.  Bul- 
lets were  falling  thick.    "No  fear,"  said  he,  "bullets 


150  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

are  used  to  me."   A  few  steps  more  and  he  fell  with- 
out a  sound  or  a  sigh,  shot  through  the  heart. 

Not  quite  twenty-one  when  he  wrote  his  first  war 
letters,  not  yet  twenty-four  when  he  wrote  the  last, 
he  had  explored  the  realms  of  duty,  of  thought,  of 
emotion  and  of  action  very  far.  He  was  a  piece  of 
the  true  France,  and  his  spirit  came  from  the  same 
world  whence,  seven  centuries  before  him,  had  pro- 
ceeded the  cathedral  of  Reims.  That  world  is  a  place 
which  the  hammer  of  Thor  cannot  smash. 


XIV 

THE    TOWERS   IN   THE    NIGHT 

As  at  Amiens,  so  now  at  Reims,  day  was  sinking 
while  I  gazed  up  at  the  towers  of  the  cathedral.  In 
the  square  below  the  towers  were  poilus,  standing 
and  moving.  I  looked  at  these  soldiers  of  France, 
over  whose  spirits  the  breath  of  war  had  passed. 
What  had  it  done  to  them?  Any  one  could  answer 
that  question  who  had  seen  the  poilu  as  I  had  seen 
him  often,  and  had  seen  him  last  in  July  1914.  In 
those  other  days  he  had  been  a  very  different  figure. 
His  clothes  hung  upon  him  without  dignity,  his  walk 
and  bearing  slouched,  his  face  had  been  trivial,  the 
whole  man  seemed  to  fall  short  of  manhood.  Today 
these  poilus  were  grave,  upstanding,  their  carriage 
erect,  giving  forth  a  sense  of  power  and  accomplish- 
ment in  full  measure.  In  truth  they  were  a  visible 
part  of  the  majesty  of  France.  Tourgueneff  said 
once:  "War  makes  more  men  than  it  kills."  The 
breath  of  war  had  blasted  the  cathedral  and  had 
blown  the  boy  away  to  lie  under  one  of  the  crosses 
that  scattered  the  land  of  France  like  fallen  stars. 
Yet,  as  from  that  first  immolation  upon  the  Cross, 
so  from  these  others,  as  the  boy  wrote  to  the  bereaved 
father  of  his  friend,  spiritual  resurrection  had  come. 
These  poilus  walking  beneath  the  towers,  now,  had 
been  ready:  and  the  readiness  is  all.  The  martyred 
cathedral  of  Reims  still  stretched  its  towers  to  God, 

151 


152  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

and  they  were  still  suppliant.  Why?  The  boy  had 
written:  "Do  not  weep  for  us,  but  continue  us." 
Continuing  was  what  confronted  the  poilus,  France, 
and  our  whole  civilization.  Sometimes  continuing 
comes  very  hard.  We  rise  to  meet  death,  but  meet- 
ing life  is  a  longer  act.  When  exaltation  has  per- 
formed its  task  and  sunk  away,  what  then  remains  to 
carry  us  through,  if  we  still  live  ?  Some  things  there 
were  that  Thor  had  smashed  with  his  hammer: 
homes,  hearts,  bodies.  These  broken  things  needed 
the  supplication  of  those  towers.  They  that  were  to 
continue  must  seek  help  in  whatever  house  of  what- 
ever God  their  spirits  knew.  Some  would  pray  in 
churches,  some  without  words  under  the  sky,  some 
would  pray  through  action,  through  sacrifice,  like  the 
boy  who  saw  the  sacred  worth  of  immolation.  All 
would  be  answered.  But  voids  there  would  be  when 
no  answer  seemed  to  come.  For  broken,  unhappy 
men  in  these  voids,  I  could  fancy  that  Reims  stretched 
its  suppliant  towers  to  God. 

Like  that  at  Amiens,  I  had  known  this  cathedral 
well.  To  come  upon  it  as  it  was  now,  with  my  mem- 
ory of  it  as  it  had  been,  unprepared,  would  have 
overwhelmed  me.  But  the  expected  sight  was  so 
full  of  unexpected  grandeur,  that  the  pain  of  its 
disfigurement  was  lost  in  new  admiration.  It  stood 
up  like  a  sort  of  proclamation  of  faith.  More  than 
ever  it  seemed  living;  too  great  to  notice  what  had 
been  done  to  it;  above  all  temporal  suffering;  the 
France  of  seven  hundred  years,  and  the  France  of 
the  years  to  come. 

Day  grew  more  dim.  In  its  waning  light  I  looked 
across  the  square  to  see  what  was  left  of  the  little 
inn,  the  Lion  d'Or,  where  I  had  eaten  and  drunk 


THE    TOWERS   IN   THE    NIGHT        153 

and  laughed  so  many  times.  From  my  bedroom 
windows  there,  I  had  always  taken  a  good-night 
look  at  the  cathedral  before  blowing  out  the  candle. 
Down  in  its  court  had  grown  a  vine,  trained  to  make 
a  screening  arbor,  and  my  last  supper  here,  June 
30th,  1914,  had  been  curtained  by  its  leaves.  No 
windows  faced  the  cathedral  any  more.  No  court 
was  there  and  no  vine.  The  Lion  d'Or  was  down  on 
the  ground,  and  where  it  had  been  were  pieces  of 
plaster  and  heaps  of  stones. 

The  tide  of  dusk  rose  a  little  higher.  We  got 
back  into  our  car  and  began  our  return  southwest 
through  the  brooding  silence  of  the  ruins.  There 
were  no  hours  left  in  which  to  include  the  one  thing 
more  that  I  should  have  liked  to  do  this  day — swing 
south  by  the  Montague  de  Reims  and  thence  east- 
ward, forty  kilometres,  across  the  Champagne  from 
Pompelle  to  Massiges.  Then  we  should  have  gone 
over  those  denuded  clay-white  plains  upon  which 
Ludendorff  on  the  15th  of  July  had  launched  that 
other  attempt  to  retrieve  the  peril  of  his  Marne 
pocket.  He  had  enveloped  the  eastern  gate-post  no 
more  than  the  west.  He  never  attained  the  old  Ro- 
man road  in  front  of  the  French  lines.  General 
Gouraud  stopped  him.  The  Montagne  de  Reims 
remained  safe  and  Chalons-on-the-Marne  was  not 
reached.  Still  the  Marne  pocket  was  left  as  it  had 
been  dug,  defenceless  on  both  sides,  a  very  dangerous 
success,  won  beneath  the  misleading  hypnotism  that 
the  mirage  of  Paris  cast  over  his  mind.  By  after- 
noon of  that  15th  of  July,  Ludendorff  and  his  em- 
peror saw  from  Blanc  Mont  that  they  had  failed. 
West  of  Reims  von  Mudra  did  better  on  that  day, 
pushing  eleven  French  and  three  American  divi- 


154  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

sions  back,  and  extending  the  pockets;  while  still 
more  to  the  west  von  Boehm  was  winning  the  south 
bank  of  the  Marne  between  Dormans  and  Chateau- 
Thierry.  But  upon  the  day  following,  the  tempest 
of  thunder  and  rain  in  which  they  came  within  ten 
miles  of  Epernay,  was  a  bad  omen  for  them.  They 
crawled  forward  on  the  16th  of  July  here  and  there, 
but  the  crawling  back  began  also.  They  gnawed 
vainly  at  the  flanks  of  the  Montague  de  Reims,  and 
along  their  whole  line  of  eighty  kilometres  ran  a 
slackening  of  their  impetus.  July  17th  saw  the 
quiver  of  the  horde  on  the  turn,  and  by  the  next 
dawn,  in  the  thunder  and  rain  of  Villers-Cotterets, 
our  second  battle  of  the  Marne  story  began. 

Our  road  southwest  from  Reims  took  us  close  to 
the  edge  of  part  of  that  ground  where  they  had 
gnawed  at  the  east  side  of  their  pocket.  We  could 
have  seen  Marfaux  had  there  been  more  light  on  the 
way  to  Ville-en-Tardenois.  But  light  was  going  now, 
visibly  each  few  moments.  Had  the  day  been  with 
us  still,  we  should  have  seen  clearly  just  the  same 
sights  as  those  of  the  morning  hours,  desolate  fields, 
desolate  houses,  emptiness.  As  it  was,  the  sharp 
edges  of  this  perpetual  spectacle  began  to  dissolve 
in  the  quiet  gloom.  Cruel  shapes  grew  gentle  in  the 
vagueness,  standing  fragments  softened,  smaller 
fragments  melted  away;  until  discernment  of  our 
road  and  what  lay  to  its  left  and  right,  ended,  and 
one  merely  felt  the  presence  of  whatever  objects 
we  passed. 

Reims  was  present,  too,  in  this  voiceless  obscurity, 
casting  over  France  its  ceaseless  influence.  As 
Amiens  stood  by  the  Somme  so  Reims  stood  by  the 
Vesle,  and  these  two  great  guardians  were  stretch- 


THE    TOWERS   IN    THE    NIGHT        155 

ing  their  suppliant  towers  unseen  in  the  night.    "Do- 
not  weep  for  us,  but  continue  us. ' ' 

Dormans  came.  We  had  already  descended  from 
the  higher  land  of  Tardenois,  and  crossed  the  Marne 
at  Bas-Verneuil.  Along  the  river  we  felt  the  trees 
passing,  and  here  and  there  passed  little  lights,  with 
wide  blank  spaces  between  them.  The  ground  over 
which  our  cautious  speed  was  now  increasing  had 
been  the  uttermost  goal  of  the  Hun,  it  was  the  out- 
side limit  of  his  onset  from  the  Chemin  des  Dames ; 
here,  as  if  he  had  struck  some  surface,  he  rebounded, 
and  his  backward  steps  to  the  place  whence  he  had 
come,  began.  He  counted,  during  the  height  of  his 
fierce  advance,  209  divisions  against  those  192  that 
had  met  him.  France  gave  103  of  these,  England 
58,  ourselves  17,  Belgium  12,  Italy  spared  2  from  her 
own  desperate  struggle  with  Austria.  While  these 
were  contending,  even  in  the  days  of  gloom  that  so 
filled  the  weeks  of  this  spring,  leaflets  of  ill  news 
were  floating  down  upon  Germany  from  the  sky. 
They  told  those  who  picked  them  up  that  six  hun- 
dred thousand  Americans,  young,  strong,  fired  with 
zeal,  were  now  landed  in  France  and  ready.  They 
came  through  the  air  with  French  aviators,  who  dealt 
them  out  like  packs  of  cards  foretelling  misfor- 
tune. These  leaflets  sailed  in  little  balloons  devised 
in  England;  their  messages  of  truth,  well  chosen 
to  strike  chill,  were  written  at  Crewe  House  by 
Sir  Campbell  Stuart.  They  fluttered  down,  and  the 
mailed  fist  was  never  able  to  seize  them  all  before 
they  had  done  their  work,  undeceiving  its  dupes  and 
weakening  the  beats  of  their  discouraged  hearts. 
When  our  4th  of  July  came,  it  was  no  longer  six 
hundred  thousand  of  us,  but  more  than  a  million, 


156  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

that  were  present  in  France,  with  more  arriving 
each  day ;  and  this,  too,  was  wafted  down  upon  Ger- 
many from  the  little  balloons. 

Our  speed  increased  as  we  went  along  the  valley 
with  the  sense  of  the  great  trees  at  our  side  and 
overhead.  We  ran  out  of  them  into  darkness  that 
continued,  but  across  which  some  distant  light  would 
shine,  then  the  nearer  darkness  would  again  shroud 
us. 

"That  was  Jaulgonne,"  said  our  captain  once  in 
the  silence,  as  a  far  light  showed  and  sank  behind. 

Below  Chateau-Thierry  we  crossed  the  river  again, 
our  road  improving  as  we  dived  forward  into  the 
endless  gulf  of  the  night.  No  one  came  by,  but  lights 
single  or  by  twos  and  threes  shone  from  time  to  time 
across  succeeding  distances.  After  Meaux  our  pace 
quickened  still  more  and  presently  seemed  to  double 
itself  along  the  empty  road.  Sometimes  upon  a  rise 
the  upward  slant  of  our  head-lamps  would  reveal 
tall  tops  of  trees  between  whose  steady  avenues  we 
were  rushing,  and  sometimes  our  flying  light  would 
glare  for  a  second  upon  a  kilometre  stone ;  but  when 
I  thought  of  the  towers,  they  seemed  as  near  as  ever. 
It  was  as  if  the  silence  were  filled  with  their  quiet 
presence,  this  silence  that  brooded  over  the  night 
as  it  had  dominated  the  day.  After  a  while  the  lights 
of  Paris  began,  and  at  eleven  we  got  out  at  the  hotel. 


XV 


UPLIFT 


I  was  tired,  but  also  I  was  wakeful.  Deeper  than 
before,  deeper  even  than  at  Amiens,  I  seemed  to 
see  into  and  comprehend  France.  My  thoughts 
turned  also  to  the  living,  whose  flesh  and  bones  were 
crushed,  who  had  known  the  wild  raptures  of  the 
blood,  the  calm  rapture  of  exaltation,  and  who  now 
were  knowing  the  empty  stages,  where  rapture  and 
exaltation  are  not.  Upon  sticks  and  crutches,  if  not 
still  unhealed  in  bed,  they  were  facing,  not  death, 
but  life.  I  had  seen  them  at  home,  and  in  England, 
and  now  here.  "Do  not  weep  for  us,  but  continue 
us."  The  boy  who  was  dead  had  wanted  no  tears 
for  the  dead,  but  he  would  have  pitied  these  living. 
They  had  to  continue  upon  their  sticks  and  crutches, 
dragging  themselves  somehow  across  the  desert 
stages  where  there  is  no  exaltation.  I  trusted  that 
in  most  of  them  that  thing  was  alive  which  Thor 
cannot  smash.  Without  it,  it  were  far  better  that 
they  were  wholly  dead.  Those  of  them  that  had  the 
habit,  or  the  occasional  mood,  of  prayer,  pagan  or 
Christian,  or  a  blend  of  both,  which  is  the  most 
honest  and  most  human  kind,  were  doomed,  like  all 
of  us,  to  pray  sometimes  to  emptiness.  Neither  the 
deepest  grief  nor  the  bitterest  remorse  equals  in  its 
desolating  chill  the  sensation  of  unanswered  prayer. 
The  vision  came  to  me  of  these  maimed  survivors, 

157 


158  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

these  fragments  of  men,  the  halt  and  the  blind,  all 
over  the  world,  a  vast  horde,  crawling  painfully 
about,  like  insects  that  have  fallen  upon  the  table 
from  a  burning  lamp. 

Does  war  make  more  men  than  it  kills?  I  wished 
that  I  had  thought  of  putting  this  question  to  the 
Tommies  at  Albert,  or  to  the  military  policeman 
from  Kansas.  Some  kind  of  answer  I  should  cer- 
tainly have  received,  though  nothing  like  so  mature 
an  answer  as  would  have  come  from  a  poilu's  more 
subtle  and  intellectualized  Latin  intelligence.  I  went 
back  the  few  steps  from  the  hotel  entrance  to  the 
Place  du  Havre;  Kansas  was  not  upon  his  island, 
nor  anywhere  else  to  be  seen  tonight.  Returning,  I 
sat  down  in  the  adjacent  cafe,  ordered  a  bock  and  a 
brioche,  and  opened  my  map  upon  the  table. 

Some  tables  away  in  the  almost  empty  place  sat  a 
creature  whom  I  was  sorry  to  see,  for  I  feared  that 
he  would  see  me  and  come  over.  He  did  not  live  in 
my  hotel,  but  evidently  somewhere  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, and  sometimes  frequented  its  reading-room 
and  hall.  Taking  me  for  a  brother  American  he 
more  than  once  had  attempted  to  invade  my  privacy 
for  longer  stretches  of  time  than  the  natural  rights 
of  man  justified,  or  my  view  of  my  own  rights  would 
allow.  I  had  hitherto  managed  not  to  swallow  any 
large  dose  of  him.  He  was  no  brother  of  mine. 
Kansas  on  the  island  was  a  brother,  and  many  of 
our  doughboys,  and  many  more  people  still :  but  not 
this  kind.  It  takes  all  sorts  of  people  to  make  a 
world,  and  all  sorts  of  people  to  make  a  United 
States;  and  I  exceedingly  regret  that  it  does  so.  I 
felt  in  my  bones  that  this  American  belonged  to  the 
numerous  and  noisy  tribe  of  conscientious  objectors 


UPLIFT  159 

to  common-sense.    Hundreds  of  these  had  come  over 
to  Europe  to  teach  Europe  how  to  suck  eggs. 

His  face  and  clothes  were  exactly  alike,  if  you 
understand  what  I  mean.  He  was  the  sort  of  per- 
son who  at  home  hands  the  plate  on  Sundays  in  the 
sort  of  church  where  the  minister  improvises  prayers 
which  last  an  hour,  reads  aloud  passages  from  The 
Literary  Digest,  and  misquotes  Longfellow.  The  ris- 
ing and  departure  of  two  Frenchmen  exposed  me  to 
his  full  gaze,  and  I  saw  this  fix  itself  upon  me  across 
the  intervening  table  where  their  glasses  stood.  Oh, 
yes,  he  was  coming ! 

"Well,  now,  who'd  have  thought  a  man  like  you 
would  be  sitting  up  here  this  late ! ' '  With  this  greet- 
ing, he  seated  himself  opposite  me,  and  smiled.  He 
had  a  vaguely  lustrous  eye,  and  his  teeth  were  too 
long,  and  slanted  outward. 

I  pulled  out  my  cigar-case  and  was  stretching  it 
over  to  him,  but  he  lifted  his  wide,  limp  hand  against 
it.  I  had  a  box  of  cigarettes,  and  these  I  offered 
him. 

"Thank  you,  I  never  use  tobacco." 

I  tapped  my  glass  of  beer. 

"Have  one,"  I  suggested,  and  signalled  to  a 
waiter. 

"I  never  use  alcohol  in  any  form,  thank  you,"  he 
said. 

The  waiter  came. 

"Bring  this  gentleman  a  cup  of  coffee.  I  hope  you 
will  keep  me  company  in  that  1 ' ' 

1 '  Thank  you,  I  have  had  all  the  refreshment  I  ever 
take  before  retiring." 

"At  least  let  me  order  you  a  toothpick!"  I  ex- 
claimed. 


160  NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 

" Sometimes  I  think  you  must  be  quite  a  joker," 
said  my  man.  "Well,  now,  I  think  you're  right  to 
joke.  I've  seen  sights  in  France — well,  now,  there's 
times  when  a  joke  helps  some." 

"Yes,"  I  assented,  wondering  if  I  had  misjudged 
him.  "Yes,  indeed.  How  long  were  you  at  the 
front?" 

"I  was  not  exactly  at  the  front.  But  I  have 
served.  My  viewpoint  is  that  in  all  walks  we  can  find 
some  way  to  serve.  And  I  have  seen  sights  and 
sights." 

"Were  you  too  old  for  the  front?" 

"No.  Not  too  old.  Not  too  old  in  years,  that  is, 
you  understand.  But  at  Fort  Oglethorpe,  they  found 
my  heart  was  not  what  it  should  be  for  my  age.  I  am 
twenty-nine  years  and  seven  months  now.  Unmar- 
ried. My  uncle  in  the  Surgeon  General 's  office  wrote 
them  about  my  heart,  because  he  knew  more  about  it 
than  those  medical  reserve  doctors  did.  But  I  was 
determined  to  serve  if  I  was  strong  enough.  I  was 
going  to  get  over  here  somehow." 

"Couldn't  you  find  any  chances  for  service  at 
home?" 

"Ah,  but  I  wanted  to  be  in  the  thick  of  it !  I'm  no 
stay-at-home. ' ' 

"Oh,  I  see." 

"And  will  you  tell  me  what  life  is  without 
service?"  he  demanded,  slightly  chanting  the  words. 

"Lots  of  fun,"  I  answered.  "Especially  when 
you're  under  thirty." 

"Now  you're  joking  again.  So  my  uncle  got  me  a 
position  in  an  uplift  mission." 

"How  very  interesting!  Which  one?  The  tuber- 
culosis caravan?  or  the  pediatric  unit?" 


UPLIFT  161 

"Peddy — I  don't  think  I  have  heard  that  men- 
tioned." 

"A  number  of  Americans  are  going  about  in 
camions  from  place  to  place,  showing  the  French  how 
to  have  and  rear  children." 

He  cast  down  his  eyes  immediately,  and  was  silent. 

"Pediatric  is  the  name  for  that  unit,"  I  explained. 
"It  comes  from  the  Greek.  It  is  a  perfectly  nice 
word.  Even  a  lady  uplifter  can  use  it  without  any 
risk. ' ' 

"My  viewpoint,"  he  now  resumed,  "is,  that  we 
should  all  avoid  certain  language.  The  unavoidable 
use  of  it  by  doctors  does  their  tone  no  good.  And 
between  tone  and  action  the  distance  is  very  short. 
Did  you  go  to  any  of  our  training  camps  ? ' ' 

"Yes." 

"Did  you  hear  the  language  of  the  young  men? 
But  you  would  get  no  slant  on  that,  because  they 
would  be  careful  before  you. " 

"Won't  you  tell  me  some  of  the  sights  you  have 
seen?"  I  asked. 

"Well,  now,  you  don't  have  to  go  far.  This  great 
French  city  right  now  is  full  of  evil. ' ' 

"Isn't  your  city  in  America?" 

"I  never  got  a  slant  on  our  cities,  though  I  have 
sensed  them,  visiting.  Father  intends  to  buy  a  new 
home  in  Little  Eock.  Have  you  noticed  the  man  out 
there?" 

"Where?" 

"There  is  a  military  policeman  out  there  some 
nights.  He  makes  no  attempt,  no  attempt  at  all,  to 
use  his  authority." 

"Why,  I  thought  he  did." 

"No  attempt.    He  allows  young  soldiers  to  walk 


162  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

right  by  him,  when  anybody  could  see  they  intended 
to  practise  immorality.  If  a  person  like  you  spoke 
to  him  and  got  his  reaction,  some  good  might  come 
of  it." 

1 '  Well,  I  don 't  know  about  that.  Do  you  mean  that 
you  spoke  to  him?" 

"I  did,  sir.  I  felt  it  my  duty,  even  if  I  was  no 
longer  officially  connected  with  uplift." 

"You  spoke  to  him  about  stopping " 

' '  I  certainly  did. ' ' 

"Jimminy  Christmas!  And  what  'reaction'  did 
you  get?" 

"I  will  not  soil  my  tongue  with  repeating  the 
language  that  he  used.  But  a  man  with  a  viewpoint 
like  his  is  a  disgrace  to  our  democratic  army. ' ' 

"You're  not  now  officially  connected  with  uplift, 
as  you  express  it?" 

"Well,  not  just  now.  But  when  I  was,  I  used  to 
come  out  between  vaudeville  acts  and  speak  to  our 
boys  about  social  purity  and  kindred  topics  of  a 
serious  nature.  It  was  against  my  principles  to  issue 
cigarettes  to  them." 

"Do  you  mean  those  cigarettes  that  people  in 
America  had  bought  for  them  and  that  were  sold  to 
them  instead?" 

"That  was  a  mistake,"  he  replied. 

"A  mistake!    Yes.    Quite." 

"The  gift  cigarettes  were  unpacked  along  with 
other  cigarettes  that  we  had  bought  to  sell  the 
soldiers  at  cost.  The  two  lots  got  mixed  up.  That 
was  all.  And  so  when  the  soldiers  opened  packages 
they  had  paid  for,  and  found  slips  inside  printed, 
telling  they  were  the  gifts  of  some  society  at  home, 
why  their  reaction  was  based  on  a  mistake.    We  tried 


UPLIFT  163 


to  give  them  the  right  slant,  but  somehow  they  never 
got  it.    My  uncle " 

'  'What  more  sights  have  you  seen?" 

' '  There  is  immorality  and  intoxication  everywhere 
you " 

' '  Yes,  I  know,  I  know.  But  everybody  isn  't  drunk. 
And  you  seem  to  me  to  have  immorality  rather  prom- 
inently on  your  mind.  Believe  me  there  is  not  much 
true  '  service '  in  making  a  military  policeman  angry. 
You  have  no  idea  how  easily  I  can  guess  the  names  he 
called  you.  Having  to  bear  these  patiently  isn 't  very 
strenuous  service,  is  it?  And,  to  be  quite  frank  with 
you,  I  think  service  ought  to  cost  a  man  something — 
his  energy,  his  brains,  effective  exercise  of  skill,  or 
good  will,  something  like  that — for  many  hours  each 
day,  and  given  freely  for  nothing.  You  needn't  wait 
for  your  uncle  to  get  you  another  job.  Jobs  lie  thick 
here  all  around  you. ' ' 

Had  my  deliberate  testing  him  succeeded  or  failed? 
Would  he  not,  if  he  were  a  self -known  hypocrite,  have 
got  up  by  now  and  gone  away?  During  my  probing 
words  I  had  watched  in  vain  for  that  special  look,  the 
glare  of  mingled  injury  and  vindictiveness,  which 
flashes  across  the  face  of  the  hypocrite  found  out.  If 
he  had  that  sensitive  spot,  my  probe  had  not  reached 
it  yet. 

"I  would  feel  indebted  to  you,"  he  said  with 
unction,  "if  you  would  mention  some  job  I  could  do 
here,  without  overstraining  my  heart,  that  is.  I  am 
a  stranger  here." 

I  bethought  me  for  an  instant.  I  could  give  him 
some  addresses  where  good  workers  were  welcome — 
but  could  he  be  any  sort  of  a  good  worker  ?  France 
was  afflicted  with  too  many  like  him,  come  over  from 


164  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

America  for  the  "uplift"  as  he  and  they  called  it,  but 
which  was  no  true  uplift  at  all,  was  merely  a  mask, 
concealing  to  others — and  to  themselves  at  least  par- 
tially— the  subtle  disguises  of  a  central  and  impreg- 
nable egotism.  Swarms  of  these  psychologically 
diseased  people  were  pervading  poor,  sad,  scarred 
France  with  their  intrusive  "missions,"  and  these 
brought  really  valuable  missions  of  relief  into 
disrepute. 

"Charity  begins  at  home,"  said  I  lightly,  but 
watching  him  close.  "Don't  stay  over  here.  There 
are  many  hundred  wounded  soldiers  in  the  Walter 
Reed  hospital,  near  Washington.  You  could  be  of 
help  to  some  of  them  every  day,  by  reading  aloud  to 
them. ' ' 

He  immediately  spread  out  his  hand  against  this 
suggestion.  "I  cannot  bear  the  sight  of  human 
suffering, ' '  he  said.     ' '  I  find  it  too  afflicting. ' ' 

A  psychologic  doctor  would  have  been  quite  satis- 
fied with  those  two  statements.  Added  to  what  had 
gone  before,  they  were  enough  to  rip  the  veil  away 
and  disclose  the  true  nature  of  this  case.  But  it  in- 
terested me  to  go  fishing  for  some  more  "reactions." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "the  Armistice  saved  much  addi- 
tional human  suffering.  I  suppose  that  we  should 
rejoice  that  it  came." 

"I  certainly  rejoice,"  he  stated. 

"And  yet,  do  you  know,"  I  continued,  "sometimes 
I  do  not  wholly  rejoice.  Sometimes  I  ask  myself, 
may  it  not  have  been  premature?" 

He  sat  erect.  "Premature?  When  it  stopped  the 
war?" 

"Yes,  if  it  stopped  it  too  soon  for  the  wholesome 
instruction  of  Germany." 


UPLIFT  165 

At  the  word  ''Germany"  I  thought  that  I  dis- 
cerned some  fleeting  change  in  his  face.    But  he  said : 

"Would  you  instruct  any  one,  even  your  enemies, 
by  means  of  war1?" 

"Certainly,  if  there  was  no  other  way." 

"Then  you  are  quite  against  universal  disarma- 
ment?" 

"Universal?  How  do  you  know  that  everybody 
will  come  into  that  game,  or  keep  the  rules  of  the 
game  if  they  do  come  in?  Don't  forget  the  Scrap 
of  Paper!  Don't  caress  yourself  with  the  thought 
it  will  be  the  last  Scrap  that  the  world  ever  sees!" 

"I  am  sorry  to  hear  you  speak  like  this,"  he  said. 
"I  never  allow  myself  to  be  cynical." 

"Just  as  much  as  we  insure  against  tire,"  I  pur- 
sued, "we  must  insure  against  war.  Never  in  mak- 
ing our  national  plans  and  preparations  can  we 
reckon  without  the  possible  chance  of  war." 
I  can't  bear  to  hear  you  say  that,"  he  said. 
Oh,  there  are  compensations,"  I  replied,  very 
lightly  and  deliberately.  "War  makes  more  men 
than  it  kills. ' ' 

He  threw  both  his  flabby  hands  above  his  head. 

"You  have  no  idea  what  a  horror  I  have  of  war!" 
he  intoned. 

"I'm  quite  sure  that  you  have!" 

This  slipped  out  before  I  could  stop  it;  but  he 
missed  it.  His  vague,  lustrous  eyes  were  filled  with 
his  chronic  preoccupation. 

"But  please  don't  imagine,"  I  amplified,  "that  you 
own  the  copyright  of  horror  of  war.  That  is  no 
monopoly  of  yours.  It  is  shared  by  a  good  many 
millions  of  us  who  would  like  war  to  become  impos- 
sible, and  yet  who  would  make  war  at  any  moment  in 


if 


166  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

the  name  of  righteousness  and  to  defend  the  liberty  of 
the  human  soul." 

"I  have  thought  it  out  clear,"  he  intoned.  "I 
know  where  I  stand.  The  most  sacred  thing  in  the 
whole  world  is  human  life.  Therefore  anything  that 
takes  human  life  is  pure  evil." 

"You're  a  Christian,  I  presume,"  I  said. 

"It  is  certainly  my  effort  to  be  one,"  he  replied. 

"Then  what  do  you  make  out  of  the  Crucifixion !" 
I  asked.  '  1  '"• 

I  knew  quite  well  how  he  must  have  dealt  with 
that,  or  would  now  deal  with  it,  if  my  sudden  ques- 
tion had  never  till  now  presented  itself  to  him.  He 
would  push  it  quickly  out  of  his  mind,  as  he  pushed 
out  every  fact  of  history  or  nature  or  human  nature 
that  caused  the  clockwork  of  his  toy  idealism  to 
slip  a  cog.  But  I  was  not  prepared  for  the  ingenuity 
with  which  his  subconscious  self  would  instantly 
protect  itself. 

"I  cannot  discuss  with  you  the  Founder  of  my 
Religion." 

"No,  you  can't,"  I  murmured,  lost  for  a  moment 
in  admiration,  which  he  took  for  defeat.  I  had 
pushed  him  pretty  close.  He  was  not  a  self-known 
hypocrite.  But  his  under-self  had  felt  the  approach 
of  my  probe  to  the  spot  it  was  hiding,  and  its  resent- 
ment had  peeped  through  in  a  hard  flash  from  his 
eye  and  a  brush  of  color  that  had  already  faded  out 
of  his  cheeks.  In  his  eye  was  now  a  reproof  at  my 
irreverent  introduction  of  the  Crucifixion.  Well,  I 
would  try  for  one  "reaction"  more. 

I  tapped  upon  my  map,  which  lay  spread  upon  the 
table. 

"By  the  way,"  I  said,  "there  is  service  that  you 


UPLIFT  167 

can  do.  Of  course  you've  seen  all  this?"  And  I 
swept  my  hand  in  a  general  way  from  Amiens  and 
Picardy  eastward  and  south  across  Soissons  and 
Reims  to  the  edge  of  the  Argonne,  which  was  as  much 
of  the  devastated  regions  as  this  particular  map 
included. 

He  leaned  over  and  looked  at  the  map,  and  then 
he  shook  his  head. 

"I  have  been  able  to  travel  very  little,"  he  said. 
"My  duties  have  been  confining." 

"Then  you  have  not  seen  anything  of  the  devas- 
tated regions?" 

"No." 

"Go  and  see  them.  There  is  your  chance  for 
service." 

"I  have  no  permit,"  he  said.  "It  requires 
influence." 

"You  forget  your  uncle.  I'm  seeing  them,  and  I 
have  no  uncle.  All  I  did  was  to  explain  to  the  proper 
people  that  I  wanted  to  visit  the  devastated  regions 
in  order  to  see  with  my  own  eyes  what  the  Germans 
had  done  to  France,  and  then  go  home  and  report 
it  to  Americans." 

"I  have  no  wish  to  report  it,"  he  replied  coldly. 
"I  do  not  consider  that  any  true  service." 

"Why?" 

"It  has  been  too  much  reported  already." 

"You're  mistaken.  It  cannot  be  too  much  re- 
ported." 

May  I  inquire  your  reason  for  such  an  opinion?" 
'Because  there  is  a  pernicious  spirit  at  home 
which  masquerades  as  Christianity.  It  preaches  the 
doctrine  of  forgiving  and  forgetting  what  the  Ger- 
mans have  done  to  France  and  Belgium.    Of  course 


if 


168  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

nothing  could  please  or  could  profit  the  Germans 
quite  so  well  as  that  the  world  in  general  and  Amer- 
ica in  particular  should  forget  what  they  did,  and 
believe  that  they  would  never  do  it  again. ' ' 

By  the  changes  in  his  face  I  could  read  that  in 
this  final  attempt  my  success  was  going  to  be  per- 
fect. When  I  had  spoken  of  a  pernicious  spirit  as 
" masquerading  as  Christianity,"  the  same  hard 
gleam  which  I  had  detected  once  before  again  flashed 
in  his  eye.  By  the  time,  however,  that  I  had 
finished  speaking,  he  had  schooled  himself  for  the 
moment.  It  might  have  been  a  preacher  that  now 
addressed  me  in  accents  reproachful  yet  mild. 

"Do  you  not  think,"  he  said,  "that  we  should  for- 
give our  enemies'?" 

"I'm  afraid  you'll  have  to  put  that  question  a  little 
plainer  before  I  can  answer  it, ' '  said  I. 

"Could  anything  be  more  plain  than  the  words 
themselves?  Are  we  not  told  in  the  Bible  to  love 
our  enemies  and  do  good  to  them  that  hate  us  ? " 

"We  are.  I  don't,  however,  remember  that  we're 
anywhere  told  to  forgive  other  people's  enemies." 

His  control  held.  He  was  still  the  benevolent, 
Christian  preacher  of  the  Gospel  of  Peace. 

"How  does  this  strike  you?"  I  asked  him.  "The 
United  States  standing  up  with  its  hands  spread 
out  in  the  attitude  of  blessing,  and  saying  to  Ger- 
many :  'I  forgive  you  for  carrying  away  French  wives 
and  daughters  to  slavery  and  prostitution ;  I  forgive 
you  for  throwing  poison  gas  into  the  hospital  and 
streets  of  the  French  town  of  Mezieres  in  the  last 
few  minutes  before  the  Armistice  was  signed,  and 
thus  killing  the  defenceless  French  whose  town 
you  were  leaving  in  haste.'    Does  that  sort  of  for- 


UPLIFT  169 

giveness  strike  you  as  costing  the  forgiver  very 
much?" 

He  took  instant  and  adroit  advantage  of  my  phrase. 

"Need  forgiveness  cost  us  anything ?"  he  asked, 
raising  one  of  his  tell-tale  hands.  "Did  it  cost  the 
father  much  to  forgive  his  prodigal  son  in  the  para- 
ble? I  admit  that  we  should  hate  the  sin,  but  let 
us  not  hate  the  sinner.  Kemember  the  prodigal  son, 
and  how  freely  he  was  forgiven!" 

"Aren't  you  omitting  a  rather  important  part  of 
that  parable?"  said  I.  "The  prodigal  son  said,  'I 
will  arise  and  go  to  my  father,  and  will  say  unto 
him,  Father  I  have  sinned  against  heaven  and  before 
thee,  and  am  no  more  worthy  to  be  called  thy  son.' 
Has  Germany  said  anything  like  that?" 

It  may  have  been  from  his  talks  to  soldiers  about 
social  purity  between  the  acts  of  vaudeville  enter- 
tainments, or  it  may  have  been  from  other  previous 
experiences,  that  he  had  learned  his  various  uses  of 
adroitness.  Wherever  he  had  been,  he  was  certainly 
skilful ;  and  his  skill  was,  of  course,  seconded  at  every 
turn  by  that  under-self  in  him  who  was  hiding  the 
spot  he  wished  to  remain  unknown  both  to  himself 
and  to  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  My  facts  about 
French  wives  and  poison  gas  at  Mezieres  he  did  not 
take  up ;  he  pushed  them  out  of  his  mind  automati- 
cally, because  they  interfered  with  his  psychological 
clockwork.  That  mechanism  was  constructed  to  ring 
melodious  bells  and  thus  drown  the  noises  of  reality 
whenever  they  threatened  to  disturb  his  artificial 
and  perfectly  sterile  idealism. 

"Both  sides  have  been  guilty  of  much  that  you  and 
I  would  condemn,"  he  now  said,  intoning  slightly 
again. 


170  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"If  you  mean  that  men  in  hot  blood  commit  acts 
they  would  be  ashamed  of  when  they  were  cool," 
said  I,  "that  is  not  what  I  am  talking  about.  I  am 
talking  about  a  plan  of  atrocity  worked  out  by  the 
German  Staff  in  advance,  the  proofs  of  which  you  can 
see  for  yourself  if  you  visit  the  devastated  regions." 

He  smiled.  "There  has  been  so  much  exaggera- 
tion." 

"Exaggeration?  I  don't  know  what  you  call  Lord 
Bryce's  report.  Or  the  French  report  of  Monsieur 
Bedier." 

"But  they  were  enemies  of  Germany,"  the  up- 
lifter  reminded  me. 

"Have  you  read  their  reports!" 

He  paused.  That  was  in  order  to  look  as  if  he 
had  read  them,  and  was  now  being  judicial  about 
their  contents.  I  doubted  his  ever  having  heard 
Bedier 's  name  before ;  but  he  could  hardly  have  es- 
caped hearing  something  about  the  investigation  of 
German  atrocities  in  Belgium  conducted  under  the 
auspices  of  Lord  Bryce.  Our  papers  had  spoken  of 
it,  and  the  facts  presented  in  the  pamphlets  had  been 
upon  many  lips.  He  would  be  well  aware  that  these 
facts,  like  the  sights  in  the  devastated  regions,  would 
be  disturbing  to  his  psychological  clockwork.  There- 
fore, to  avoid  the  trouble  of  putting  them  out  of  his 
mind,  he  would  never  let  them  come  into  it. 

"Lord  Bryce,"  he  began  in  a  weighty  and  dispas- 
sionate manner,  "  is  an  eminent  man.  He  is  an  honest 
man.    We  are  all  convinced  of  his  sincerity. ' ' 

"Quite  so,"  said  I. 

"But  we  must  not  forget  that  Lord  Bryce  may 
have  been  deceived.  He  was  not  on  the  spot.  He 
did  not  see  those  alleged  deeds  committed  with  his 


UPLIFT  171 

own  eyes.  How  could  he  be  sure  that  the  witnesses 
were  telling  the  truth?" 

''Don't  you  think  that  with  his  long  career  in  Par- 
liament and  in  public  life  that  he  would  have  become 
fairly  expert  in  such  matters,  pretty  careful  to  sift 
what  was  laid  before  him?" 

"My  dear  sir,  mature  judges  have  been  deceived 
before.    Who  of  us  is  infallible?" 

"But  there  was  the  Supplemental  Report,  contain- 
ing photographs  of  letters  written,  and  diaries — all 
in  the  handwriting  of  Germans,  who  recorded  not 
only  the  atrocities  they  saw  others  commit,  but  the 
atrocities  they  committed  themselves.  They  were 
photographs,  remember,  with  the  dates,  and  the 
names  of  the  writers,  their  rank,  and  the  regiments 
to  which  they  belonged. ' ' 

He  smiled  again.  "Can  you  and  I  be  sure  that 
these  photographs  were  not  forgeries?" 

It  was  growing  late.  No  one  was  left  in  the  cafe 
but  ourselves  and  the  waiters.  These  were  noisily 
lifting  chairs  from  the  floor  and  piling  them  upside 
down  upon  the  empty  tables,  casting  upon  us  the 
while  looks  of  increasing  inhospitality.  I  decided 
that  I  must  bring  him  to  a  boil.  So  long  as  he  re- 
mained tepid — and  he  knew  the  strategic  value  of  a 
moderate  temperature  very  shrewdly — he  could  not 
be  surprised  into  that  final  "reaction"  which  would 
complete  the  quod  erat  demonstrandum  of  his  case. 
To  surprise  him  circumspection  was  needed,  and 
therefore  I  began  my  approach  from  quite  a  safe 
distance. 

"Of  course  I  cannot  prove  to  you  that  those  photo- 
graphs of  letters  in  Lord  Bryce's  Supplemental  Re- 
port were  authentic  documents.    To  do  that  I  should 


172  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

have  to  show  you  the  letters  in  the  presence  of  those 
who  had  written  them,  and  have  the  men  state  under 
oath  that  it  was  their  own  handwriting.  But  on  the 
other  hand,  how  can  you  prove  to  me  that  they  were 
not  genuine  ? ' ' 

"I  admit  freely  that  I  can  not.  Therefore  I  hold 
my  opinion  in  reserve.  That  is  what  I  so  wish  you 
would  do  about  all  these  matters. " 

He  did  not  know  how  nearly  this  remark  brought 
me  to  a  boil.    But  I  continued  to  stalk  him. 

"Have  you  heard  anything  about  Shantung?"  I 
inquired.  "Hints  reach  me  that  it  is  giving  them 
trouble  at  the  Peace  Conference."    I  spoke  softly. 

"Oh,  no,"  he  replied.  "I  am  not  near  enough  to 
anybody  there." 

"I've  never  been  to  Japan,"  I  said,  "or  to  China 
either.  China  must  be  still  a  very  strange  place.  Is 
it  Canton  or  Shanghai  that's  the  capital?" 

"Why,  Peking  is  the  capital." 

1 '  You  've  seen  it !  How  I  envy  you ! "  I  spoke  more 
softly  still. 

"No.    I  have  had  no  opportunity  to  visit  China." 

"Then,  how  do  you  know  that  Peking  is  the  capi- 
tal?" This  I  almost  whispered.  A  sudden  change 
had  come  into  his  look,  but  he  was  too  late. 

"You  have  never  seen  Peking  with  your  own 
eyes,"  I  pursued.  "You  can  not  know  that  it  is 
really  the  capital  of  China.  You  have  taken  the  word 
of  maps  and  geographies  for  it.  How  do  you  know 
that  they  are  not  forgeries?  Should  you  not  hold 
your  opinion  in  reserve?" 

He  rose  abruptly.  * '  I  will  bid  you  good-night, ' '  he 
said.  "I  thought  I  was  talking  to  a  man  who  lived 
on  the  higher  plane. : 


>> 


UPLIFT  173 

He  was  gone  at  once.  More  slowly,  I  folded  my 
map  and  slid  it  back  into  its  cover,  and  left  the  cafe 
to  the  piles  of  chairs  and  the  impatient  waiters.  I 
had  brought  him  to  a  boil,  the  lid  he  so  tightly  kept 
upon  his  under-self  had  come  off,  and  up  from  the 
bottom  had  bubbled  the  key-word  that  unlocked  him. 
This  case  of  diseased  psychology  was  demonstrated. 

France  was  filled  with  "uplifters"  such  as  he,  con- 
scientious objectors  to  common-sense,  all  living  upon 
the  "higher  plane."    So,  unluckily,  is  America. 


XVI 

CHEMIN   DE   FEE   DE   i/eST 

Early  the  next  morning  after  my  talk  with  the 
nplifter,  I  entered  the  Gare  de  l'Est.  Above  the 
stream  of  travellers'  on  their  way  to  the  platforms  of 
the  Eastern  railroad  in  Paris,  beacons  a  white  dial, 
a  meeting-place  for  many.  Swarms  of  our  dough- 
boys surrounded  it ;  French  passengers  were  lost  in 
this  crowd.  To  these  American  soldiers  returning 
from  their  permissions,  the  sight  of  themselves  here, 
and  the  sound  of  their  own  voices  was  nothing  out 
of  the  way,  but  it  was  like  a  dream  to  me.  I  had 
sped  past  the  dial  so  often  in  other  days,  that  now 
to  come  upon  this  flood  of  the  New  World  in  khaki 
beneath  it,  literally  submerging  the  Old  World,  made 
me  stare. 

The  New  World  flooded  my  train,  part  of  which 
was  going  to  Metz,  and  part  to  Strasbourg.  After 
some  five  hours  it  would  divide  at  a  junction  which 
lay  to  the  southeast  of  the  St.  MDiiel  country,  the  next 
step  of  our  pilgrimage.  All  the  way  we  should  run 
just  within,  or  just  along,  the  edge  of  battle-grounds 
as  ancient  as  Caesar  and  as  recent  as  Foch ;  through 
Meaux  and  La  Ferte-sous-Jouarre  on  the  Marne, 
whence  the  Hun  had  been  beaten  back  in  Septem- 
ber, 1914;  through  Chateau-Thierry;  through  Mezy, 
where  on  July  15th,  1918,  the  38th  Eegiment  of  our 
3rd  Division  with  a  platoon  of  the  30th  had  won  its 
name,  "The  Rock  of  the  Marne."  All  the  more  be- 
cause we  had  passed  some  of  these  places  yesterday, 

174 


CHEMIN   DE   FER   DE   L'EST         175 

either  in  daylight  or  in  dark,  I  was  glad  that  they 
were  to  come  by  again,  and  I  should  have  liked  to 
get  out  and  walk  and  linger  over  all  that  ground 
where  our  soldiers  had  stopped  Ludendorff.  Right 
down  the  time-table  of  our  Strasbourg  express,  name 
after  name  sounded  the  overtones  of  historic  asso- 
ciation: Jaulgonne  and  Dormans  rang  with  Ameri- 
can dash ;  Epernay  bubbled  with  memories  of  golden 
wine;  farther  up  the  valley  we  should  follow  the 
Marne  and  be  running  to  the  south  of  Blanc  Mont 
and  Suippes,  and  the  Main  de  Massiges,  that  Cham- 
pagne country  where  Gouraud  had  splendidly  halted 
Ludendorff.  Then,  with  Chalons-sur-Marne  behind 
us,  our  train  would  run  on  eastward  below 
Ste.  Menehould,  below  the  Argonne,  beyond  the 
Marne,  the  Meuse,  the  Moselle,  and  so  after 
dividing  reach  its  two  destinations  over  rails 
now  once  again  wholly  upon  French  soil.  The 
last  time  that  I  had  travelled  on  this  Chemin  de  Fer 
de  l'Est,  my  course  had  been  from  Strasbourg  as  far 
as  Avricourt  across  land  of  the  Kaiser's,  descended 
to  him  from  his  grandfather,  who  had  torn  it  from 
the  map  of  France  after  the  Bismarck  victory  in 
1871.  After  forty-seven  years  Alsace  and  Lorraine 
were  French  once  more,  and  America  had  helped  to 
bring  this  about.  I  thought  of  the  crowds  beneath 
the  clock  and  of  the  trains  drawn  up  by  the  platforms 
during  the  years  before  we  came  in,  the  black  years 
of  Verdun,  and  the  mutiny  of  1917.  Those  trains 
had  carried  soldiers  daily  up  the  Marne  valley,  grave 
soldiers  in  blue,  going  to  Ste.  Menehould,  the  Ar- 
gonne, Vaux,  and  Douaumont,  many  of  them  destined 
never  to  see  the  clock  again. 
To-day  it  was  our  soldiers  who  crowded  the  train. 


176  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

They  were  returning  to  their  regiments  at  various 
places,  each  fresh  (or  stale)  from  his  "permission" 
in  Paris,  and  the  scene  recalled  to  me  in  a  way  cer- 
tain trains  at  home  between  New  York  and  Boston, 
when  our  boys  are  going  back  to  their  various  New 
England  schools  after  the  Christmas  holidays.  As 
I  walked  slowly  beside  the  long  train,  its  open  win- 
dows hummed  with  the  sound  of  voices  jocund  and 
youthful.  No  more  than  the  school-boys  converse 
about  Caesar  and  his  Gallic  war,  did  these  doughboys 
make  references  to  the  historic  interest  of  the  jour- 
ney before  them.  Bits  of  their  talk  reached  me  from 
the  windows,  and  it  was  all  what  you  would  naturally 
expect  and  some  that  you  would  naturally  not  repeat. 
Dearlv  should  I  have  liked  to  join  them  and  hear 
something  of  their  Parisian  adventures  and  impres- 
sions, their  murmur  sounded  so  buoyant,  so  charm- 
ing to  my  elderly  ears.  Thus  certainly  did  Caesar's 
legionaries,  and  possiblv  even  Attila's,  gaily  converse 
between  slaughters,  without  anv  more  suspicion  that 
their  deeds  were  destined  heavily  to  bore  the  school- 
boys of  today  than  these  vivacious  fellows  from  the 
Hudson  and  the  Mississippi,  whom  the  train  of  the 
Chemin  de  Fer  de  PEst  would  presently  be  rushing 
over  Caesar's  and  Attila's  ground,  were  aware  that 
their  deeds,  too,  would  heavily  bore  the  school-boys 
of  the  future.  They  in  their  turn  had  made  history, 
and  farther  from  home  that  ever  Caesar  or  Attila 
had  been  able  to  get.  The  train  was  not  starting  yet, 
and  I  continued  to  walk  along  it,  looking  at  this  new 
vision  of  America  in  the  Old  World.  Some  tales  of 
ill  behavior  on  the  part  of  our  men  had  reached 
me,  to  be  sure,  and  of  certain  harsh  and  even  cruel 
punishments,  which  a  young  soldier  friend  has  since 


CHEMIN   DE   FER   DE   L'EST         177 

told  me  he  believed  on  the  whole,  timely,  in  spite  of 
their  widely  published  excess.  I  can  quite  believe  it. 
Upon  thousands  of  lusty  youths,  far  from  home,  let 
loose  from  military  discipline  upon  a  great  metropo- 
lis, a  firm  hand  needs  to  be  kept.  But  ill  behavior 
was  not  the  prevailing  characteristic  of  our  boys, 
and  a  picture  of  them  has  been  drawn  by  a  French- 
man, Andre  Chevrillon,  whose  delightful  pages,  en- 
titled "The  Americans  at  Brest,"  give  what  I  fancy 
represents  the  impression  which  France  will  retain 
of  us  when  incidental  memories  of  roughness  and 
discord  have  died  away.  In  the  first  days  of  their 
home-coming  our  soldiers,  just  like  those  I  had  met 
in  Paris  streets,  cherished  some  resentments,  chiefly 
connected  with  high  prices ;  but  two  years  later,  the 
officers  and  enlisted  men  whom  I  happened  to  tell 
that  I  was  going  back  to  take  another  look  at  France, 
never  failed  to  exclaim,  with  light  in  their  eyes,  that 
they  wished  they  were  going  too.  And  quite  often 
they  would  add,  that  if  I  should  visit  such  and  such 
a  place,  would  I  look  up  a  certain  house  where  they 
had  been  billeted,  or  a  certain  corner  where  they 
had  been  wounded,  or  some  other  thing,  some  hill 
or  wood  or  street  or  bank  or  stream  that  was  now 
become  a  magnet  in  their  memories,  drawing  their 
spirits  back  to  France,  the  country  of  their  great 
adventure.    That  is  what  Time  does  for  us  all. 

Not  every  window  of  this  long  train  was  filled  with 
a  doughboy,  nor  was  every  car  dedicated  to  them. 
At  certain  windows  French  travellers  stood  and 
stared  out  with  that  particular  glare,  which  we  all 
assume  in  European  trains,  to  discourage  everybody 
else  from  entering  our  compartment  to  take  a  seat. 
But  these  glares  did  not  worry  me.    Our  young  cap- 


178  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

tain  whom  we  had  begun  to  see  at  37,  Rue  de  Bas- 
sano,  and  begun  to  know  at  Belleau  Wood,  had  us 
still  in  his  charge  and  had  taken  every  care  of  us  in 
the  matter  of  tickets  and  reserved  seats  in  this  early- 
starting  and  thickly-peopled  train.  Our  car  was  of 
German  make,  allotted  to  France  after  the  Armistice, 
and  of  better  build,  more  solid  and  handsome  in  every 
respect  than  French  cars.  After  we  had  attained 
full  speed  it  was  a  cautious  rate,  never  above  thirty- 
five  miles  an  hour.  Owing  to  the  dilapidations  of 
road-beds  during  four  years  of  fighting,  all  trains 
ran  slower,  those  between  Paris  and  Strasbourg  now 
taking  from  twelve  to  thirteen  hours  instead  of  seven 
or  eight.  Over  this  line  three  expresses  now  ran 
daily ;  in  1914  there  had  been  nine  or  ten.  The  great 
through  expresses  to  Constantinople,  Carlsbad,  and 
Berlin,  for  instance,  had  of  course  all  been  abolished. 
About  twenty  express  trains  were  now  running  in 
the  whole  of  France. 

Special  trains  were  arranged  for  our  doughboys 
between  their  various  important  camps  and  the  dif- 
ferent leave  areas,  but  these  could  not  wholly  relieve 
the  regular  trains  of  their  burden.  From  certain 
of  the  best  expresses  the  enlisted  man  was  excluded 
by  order — and  this  most  naturally  was  a  challenge 
to  his  young  spirit ;  he  got  aboard  them  whenever  he 
could  dodge  our  military  police,  and  exerted  his  en- 
tire guile  to  stay  in  them  without  being  discovered 
and  turned  out  before  the  journey's  end. 

Soon  after  we  had  reached  the  Marne,  I  made  a 
progress  of  exploration  through  the  congested  cor- 
ridors of  almost  all  the  cars.  I  squeezed  my  way 
through  knots  of  doughboys  blocking  the  passage, 
leaning,  smoking,  loquacious,  thinking  little  of  other 


CHEMIN   DE   FER   DE   L'EST         179 

passengers,  few  of  them  intentionally  ruae,  most  of 
them  merely  young  and  rough  and  in  high  spirits. 
As  I  worked  along  back  and  forth  through  the  long 
train,  and  realized  that  trains  all  over  France,  every 
day  in  the  week,  were  running  to  and  from  the  leave 
areas  bursting  with  young  America,  I  felt  more  in- 
dulgent than  ever  to  the  French  impatience  with  us. 
I  could  have  put  the  case  better  now  to  the  discon- 
tented soldiers  with  whom  I  had  reasoned  in  Paris 
streets  and  shops. 

The  wide-awake  fellow  from  Danbury  had  said: 

"Do  you  think  if  they  had  come  over  and  saved 
New  York  and  Bridgeport  and  New  Haven  for  us, 
we'd  be  showing  them  the  door  like  they're  showing 
it  to  us?" 

"Yes,"  I  should  certainly  now  have  replied.  "I 
think  we  should  be  showing  them  the  door,  and  less 
civilly.  Would  you  find  it  easy  to  say  to  them  every 
time  they  swarmed  into  your  train,  trod  on  your 
instep,  shoved  their  elbows  into  your  ribs,  and  filled 
your  face  with  tobacco  smoke,  'Keep  it  up,  dear 
saviour  of  my  country.  How  can  I  ever  forget  that 
nine  months  ago  you  fought  at  MezyT  " 

Lovely  in  the  quiet  rain  was  this  valley  of  many 
wars,  seeming  to  grow  greener  as  the  drops  continued 
to  fall  gently  upon  it.  It  was  as  if  May  each  hour  were 
turning  higher  the  lights  of  spring,  and  spring  were 
visibly  feathering  the  trees  along  the  Marne.  We 
passed  the  tower  of  Meaux,  the  fields  sloping  up  to 
woods,  the  steeper  banks,  the  levels  by  the  winding 
river.  To  our  right  at  first,  then  after  Trilport  to 
our  left,  it  curved  constantly  across  our  way,  and 
sometimes  we  lost  it  in  the  sudden  darkness  of  a 
tunnel  to  emerge  upon  it  again  in  the  sudden  light. 


180  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

We  soon  passed  into  the  zone  of  ruin.  Not  the  least 
gruesome  sight  here  were  solitary  houses,  off  on  the 
hillsides,  gutted  within,  with  grey  walls  standing 
roofless,  and  black  window-holes  like  eyes  that 
watched  you  though  they  were  blind :  mile  after  mile 
of  this  among  the  ploughed  and  sown  slants  of  culti- 
vated soil,  that  chequered  the  sloping  boundaries  of 
the  valley.  The  land  here  had  been  less  wrecked 
than  the  buildings  and  was  coming  to  life  again,  but 
they  were  not.  And  out  there  beyond  sight  across 
the  river  to  the  north,  if  you  followed  those  little 
roads  up  the  hills,  you  would  come  into  the  plain  of 
Tardenois  and  be  swallowed  at  once  in  the  wide- 
stretching  desolation  of  the  Ourcq  and  the  Aisne 
and  the  Vesle,  and  could  go  on  to  your  right  or  your 
left  or  in  front,  and  look  at  Reims,  Soissons,  Coucy- 
le-Chateau,  St.  Quentin,  and  so  to  Ypres,  and  never 
take  one  step  that  was  not  upon  the  grave  of  some- 
thing. „ 

At  Epernay  we  made  a  considerable  pause,  and 
I  got  out,  and  on  the  platform  beheld  the  manufac- 
ture of  some  international  hate.  A  boy  of  about  eigh- 
teen had  rolled  the  customary  two-story  edifice  of 
trays  on  wheels  along  beside  the  cars.  Bread,  or- 
anges, champagne,  with  other  food  and  drink,  filled 
the  trays,  and  the  doughboys  were  stretching  their 
arms  out  of  the  windows  toward  these  refreshments. 
I  didn't  catch  what  prices  the  boy  had  asked  for  his 
wares,  but  I  came  in  time  to  hear  the  loud  results. 
Some  of  the  soldiers  had  jumped  down  and  sur- 
rounded him  and  his  rolling  booth,  and  stood  with 
the  buns  and  the  bottles  they  had  picked  out,  curs- 
ing him  for  a  robber  and  a  cheat.  On  him  was  evi- 
dently pouring  their  accumulated  resentment  for 


CHEMIN   DE   FEE   DE   L'EST         181 

many  over-charges.  He  stood  dazed  and  sulky  amid 
the  storm  of  language,  speaking  not  a  word  of  Eng- 
lish, but  perfectly  able  to  understand  that  he  was 
being  called  obscene  and  filthy  names  for  what  was 
no  fault  of  his.  He  hadn't  made  the  prices,  they  had 
been  set  by  the  proprietor  of  the  buffet  in  the  station. 
And  he  was  so  much  younger  than  the  soldiers ! 

"Say,"  shouted  one  of  them,  "you  ought  to  be 
glad  for  our  buying  your  stuff." 

And  another  from  the  window,  pointing  to  some 
eatable : 

"Say,  Eain-in-the-face,  how  much  is  that?" 

I  couldn't  help  laughing  at  this  and  at  several 
more  of  their  violent  remarks;  but  I  was  ashamed 
of  them,  and  of  myself,  too,  for  not  protesting.  How 
often  had  this  boy  been  forced  to  receive  similar  in- 
sults, what  sentiments  toward  America  was  he  going 
to  retain  and  spread,  how  many  such  scenes  had  been 
enacted  throughout  France  ?  And  if  this  was  excep- 
tional and  I  had  chanced  upon  a  spot  of  blackguards 
in  khaki,  would  such  spots  stain  all  the  decenter 
rest  of  us  in  the  French  memory? 

Of  such  spots  I  had  heard  elsewhere.  Every  day 
to  some  soldiers  quartered  in  the  north,  a  lady  of 
the  neighborhood  sent  good  things  from  her  kitchen 
garden,  and,  constant  in  her  appreciation  of  our  com- 
ing over,  had  made  these  soldiers  welcome  to  the 
pleasant  grounds  of  her  estate.  This  did  not  stop 
some  of  them  from  loud  and  unfavorable  opinions 
of  the  French,  expressed  continually  in  a  trolley  car 
that  ran  through  the  district.  There  they  sat  talk- 
ing one  day,  and  there  sat  the  lady  too ;  and  an  army 
surgeon,  who  could  bear  it  no  longer,  rebuked  them 
and  was  told  to  mind  his  business.    But  he  reported 


182  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

the  scandal  to  the  commanding  officer,  and  there  was 
no  more  of  it.  Which  was  France  going  to  remem- 
ber, the  army  surgeon  or  the  "roughnecks"?  It 
was  not  only  enlisted  men,  it  was  officers  as  well, 
whose  words  and  conduct  spotted  American  reputa- 
tion. As  when,  for  instance,  a  certain  general  accom- 
panied a  film  machine  and  a  certain  benevolent 
organization  to  a  certain  hospital,  and  there  ordered 
out  the  convalescent  men  and  staged  a  moving  pic- 
ture which  "featured"  himself.  Assuming  his  pos- 
ture, he  ordered  the  patients  to  race  and  pick  up 
little  gifts  flung  to  them  by  the  benevolent  organiza- 
tion. When  the  photograph  was  finished  the  little 
gifts  were  taken  back  from  the  convalescents,  and 
the  general  with  his  benevolent  apparatus  marched 
on  to  a  new  place  and  had  more  films  made.  Or 
again,  for  instance,  when  a  certain  officer  issued  an 
order  that  "The  -th  regiment  will  de-French  and 
de-louse  at ,  and  embark  on  the  -th."  These  ex- 
amples— more  could  be  given — should  suffice  to  re- 
mind any  American,  inclined  to  complain  of  French 
shortcomings,  that  the  boot  is  not  always  on  the 
same  leg.  That  the  conduct  of  our  enlisted  men  was 
on  the  whole  more  creditable  than  that  of  their  com- 
missioned officers  is  something  that  I  have  heard 
too  often  from  commissioned  officers  themselves  not 
to  believe.  Some  of  the  unfit  were  weeded  out,  but 
the  Armistice  came  too  soon  for  this  process  to  be 
complete.  Quite  naturally,  much  more  impregnable 
conceit  was  to  be  found  among  the  middle-aged  vege- 
table officers  of  our  regular  army  than  in  those  who 
had  come  from  successful  responsibility  in  civil  life. 
While  discussing  our  army  with  me,  a  French  gen- 
eral said: 


CHEMIN   DE   FER   DE   L'EST         183 

"When  an  American  officer  told  me  that  I  need 
not  tell  him  anything,  I  knew  that  I  had  a  bad  soldier 
to  deal  with.  When  an  American  officer  asked  me 
to  tell  him  what  to  do,  I  knew  that  he  would  prove 
a  good  soldier."  He  went  on  to  explain  with  illus- 
trations how  admirable  he  had  found  the  Americans, 
how  quick  to  seize  a  point.  ' '  Make  them  understand 
a  thing  once,"  he  said,  "and  you  need  feel  no  more 
anxiety.    They  would  carry  it  out. ' '    ^ 

Among  our  doughboys  the  spot  at  Epernay  is  the 
only  one  that  I  saw,  and  this  makes  me  sure  that  the 
French  are  sincere  and  not  merely  polite  when  they 
express  admiration  of  us,  as  they  do  today:  our 
general  tone  must  have  been  wonderfully  decent. 
Two  years  later,  when  a  lady  who  lived  on  a  great 
estate  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  country  was  speak- 
ing to  me  of  the  war  as  it  was  after  we  had  come  in, 
and  of  the  Americans  who  had  during  some  months 
in  1918  occupied  part  of  her  ancient  house  and  part 
of  her  land,  she  had  such  cordial  words  to  say  that 
I  exclaimed: 

"Well,  I  hope  that  you  are  not  telling  this  to  me 
just  because  I  am  an  American!  I  hope  that  our 
boys  did  conduct  themselves  pretty  well  on  the 
whole?"  ti:*-  % 

1 1  But  they  were  charming !  We  shall  never  forget 
them :  so  gay,  so  athletic,  and  some  of  them  so  good 
looking!  And  they  always  thanked  us  for  the  little 
that  we  could  do  for  them."  Then  she  smiled  and 
shrugged  her  shoulders.  "Some  little  Americans 
are  running  about  in  our  village  today ;  but  that  was 
quite  likely  the  fault  of  our  own  lasses." 

"You  are  very  indulgent,"  I  replied;  "and  from 
the  chronicles  of  chivalry  it  would  appear  that  wan- 


184  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

dering  warriors  have  always  been  apt  to  leave  their 
portraits  behind  them." 

It  was  none  the  less  new  to  think  of:  our  dough- 
boys home  by  the  Hudson  and  the  Mississippi,  or 
sleeping  in  their  graves  by  the  Marne  and  the  Meuse, 
and  little  Americans  strewed  about  in  Lorraine,  and 
Dauphine,  and  Anjou. 

Nobody  ever  seemed  to  get  out  of  this  train ;  they 
seemed  only  to  get  in.  They  had  an  excellent  oppor- 
tunity to  leave  us  at  Chalons-sur-Marne,  and  one 
other  at  Vitry-le-Frangois,  but  these  they  neglected 
and  stuck  to  their  seats  closer  than  brothers,  while 
the  corridors  remained  congested  with  standing  pas- 
sengers. Everyone  was  apparently  bound  at  least 
as  far  as  we  were,  and  when  an  emissary  in  uniform 
from  the  restaurant  car  pushed  his  way  past  the 
door  of  our  compartment,  announcing — 

"  Dejeuner  deuxieme!  Deuxieme  service  de- 
jeuner!"— 

I  felt  my  approbation  of  the  French  system  in- 
crease. The  steward's  announcement  may  well  be 
translated  into  the  rubric  that  I  once  heard  a  black 
waiter  upon  the  Michigan  Central  poetically  chant- 
ing through  my  Pullman: 

"Second  call 
In  the  breakfast  hall!" 

We  rose  and  manoeuvred  towards  the  distant  food, 
our  minds  at  rest.  At  home,  with  the  number  of 
passengers  upon  our  train,  and  but  one  restaurant 
car,  attaining  a  meal  would  have  proved  a  struggle 
to  which  we  very  likely  might  have  preferred  starva- 
tion. In  France  there  is  no  standing  for  thirty  or 
sixty  miles  at  the  door  of  the  dining-car,  or  lurching 


CHEMIN   DE   FER   DE   L'EST         185 

about  in  its  vestibule,  till  your  turn  conies.  Before 
you  get  into  your  train,  you  stop  at  the  steps,  where 
the  steward  gives  you  a  ticket  for  the  service  you 
prefer,  unless  you  are  late,  when  you  may  have  to 
take  what  you  can  get.  Sometimes  there  are  three 
services,  each  lasting  about  an  hour.  Once  you  pos- 
sess your  ticket,  your  cares  are  over,  you  sit  quiet 
until  your  "service"  is  called,  and  then  you  go  and 
find  a  seat  ready  for  you  at  a  table  which  has  been 
cleanly  re-set.  To  all  this  our  vigilant  captain  had 
attended.  While  we  comfortably  ate,  drinking  good 
white  wine  with  it,  the  landscape  flattened  and  wid- 
ened, marshes  passed,  and  spreads  of  water,  in  which 
many  stunted  willows  stood  in  lines  or  clumps  like 
children  wading.  Behind  this  untroubled  scene  of 
spring,  lay  always  the  country  of  ruins  and  graves, 
Massiges,  Ste.  Menehould,  the  Argonne. 

East  and  west  every  day  travelled  our  doughboys 
on  this  Chemin  de  Fer  de  l'Est,  upon  which  I  shall 
never  travel  again  without  affectionately  thinking  of 
them.  Like  the  Chemin  de  Fer  du  Nord  and  no  other 
of  the  great  French  railways,  its  main  lines  and 
branches  crossed  and  pervaded  the  upheaved  regions 
of  the  war,  and  upon  both  I  have  made  many  jour- 
neys to  the  land  of  silence.  Over  most  of  their  miles 
of  track  nothing  was  running  in  May  1919,  their 
rusty  rails  stretched  through  emptiness,  or  were  torn 
up.  Whilst  I  have  been  travelling  in  their  cars,  I 
have  thought  often  of  those  trains  that  during  the 
years  of  strife  had  taken  soldiers  of  France  and 
England,  not  to  the  land  of  silence,  but  to  the  land 
of  bombs  and  gas  and  flames.  My  own  safe  jour- 
neys can  never  be  forgotten,  and  pictures  of  various 
fellow-travellers  remain  vivid  in  my  memory,  espe- 


186  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

cially  those  of  the  Chemin  de  Fer  de  l'Est,  of  which 
my  impressions  are  more  copious.  Once  along  the 
Meuse,  I  was  going  to  a  small  village  to  find,  if  I 
could,  the  grave  of  an  American  boy.  I  had  the  com- 
partment to  myself  until  at  our  second  stop  the  door 
opened  and  in  got  a  rosy  French  girl  whose  eyes 
sparkled  upon  a  young  Frenchman  as  rosy.  They 
sat  opposite  each  other  by  their  window,  I  sat  at 
mine.  Unless  it  was  the  better  to  gaze  at  each  other 
I  couldn't  imagine  then,  and  can't  now,  why  they 
were  not  sitting  on  the  same  seat,  for  really,  such 
honeymooning  I  have  never  beheld  by  daylight,  and 
I  am  sixty-one  years  old.  Not  to  be  in  the  way,  I 
looked  out  of  my  window  with  the  utmost  delicacy, 
and  repeated  verses  from  the  "Song  of  Solomon." 
But  at  a  sharp  slap  I  jumped  round. 

"Isn't  she  wicked?"  he  asked  me,  gay  spirits  and 
tenderness  blending  in  his  tones. 

"Yes,  indeed!"  I  exclaimed.  His  cheek  was  red 
from  her  hand. 

"What  was  the  use  in  looking  out  of  the  window? 

They  went  on  quite  regardless  of  me,  until  the 
train  slowed  for  a  station.  Then  he  gave  her  such 
a  kiss  that  she  protested. 

"But  the  monsieur  doesn't  mind  us,"  he  assured 
her,  and  both  their  glances  appealed  to  me,  hers 
saying,  "You  see  I  can't  stop  him!"  and  his,  "You 
understand!" 

We  halted  and  she  got  out.  At  the  open  door  a 
little  baby  was  lifted  up  to  her,  evidently  by  its  grand- 
parents. She  took  it  from  them,  while  he  waved 
ardent  good-byes  to  her  and  the  family  group. 

"Then  you're  not  getting  out  with  her?"  I  ex- 
claimed to  him  in  surprise  and  sympathy. 


CHEMIN   DE   FER   DE   L'EST         187 

He  was  not,  he  had  to  go  to  his  work  at  another 
place.  He  had  been  taking  her  for  a  little  holiday. 
Soon  I  had  left  the  train,  and  was  walking  by  a 
broken  wall  among  crosses,  reading  the  names  of 
the  dead  and  of  the  battles  where  they  had  fallen. 

The  Chemin  de  Fer  de  l'Est  has  furnished  my 
memory  with  many  pictures.  That  harsh  scene  of 
our  doughboys  and  the  French  lad  at  Epernay  has 
been  softened  by  time  and  reflection,  and  also  by  a 
sprightly  performance,  in  which  I  played  a  slight 
part.  We  had  got  into  a  Paris  express  at  Bar-le- 
Duc,  and  according  to  my  wont  I  began  after  a  time 
to  wander  along  the  corridors  to  see  what  I  could 
see.  Disappointment  was  my  first  "reaction"  (that 
uplifter  has  poisoned  my  vocabulary  with  his  cant- 
ing jargon),  I  found  neither  honeymooners  nor 
doughboys,  but  only  the  average  population  of  any 
French  express  train.  As  I  was  standing  in  the 
corridor  of  a  second-class  car,  looking  out  of  the 
window  and  thinking  I  would  give  up  my  search 
for  local  color  and  go  back  to  my  own  car,  the  door 
of  the  lavatory  opened  and  three  doughboys  came 
out.  Why  three  at  once  in  a  lavatory?  And  why  only 
three  on  the  whole  train?  And  why  had  I  not  seen 
them  when  I  was  exploring?  I  wanted  to  ask  them 
how  long  they  had  been  in  there,  but  this  seemed 
too  leading  a  question  for  an  entire  stranger.  They 
stopped  beside  me  and  stood  watching  the  scenery 
with  what  struck  me  as  an  interest  more  lively  than 
it  justified ;  flat  fields,  marshes  and  stretches  of  water 
with  willows,  should  hardly  absorb  three  doughboys, 
unless  they  were  all  landscape  painters.  Nothing 
was  said  by  any  of  us  for  a  while,  until  at  last  one 
of  them  addressed  me  with  a  certain  hesitation : 


J  > 


188  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"Do  yon  speak  English?" 

"Oh,  yes." 

"Could  you  tell  us  how  soon  we  get  to  Chalons? 

"Well,"  I  answered,  "at  a  guess,  I  should  say 
in  about  forty-five  minutes." 

Why  did  they  all  laugh? 

This  I  did  not  inquire^  but  asked : 

"Are  you  getting  out  at  Chalons?"  at  which  they 
laughed  still  more. 

"Oh,  no,"  one  said.  "We've  got  three  days'  per- 
mission for  Paris,  but  we're  not  allowed  to  ride  on 
this  fast  through  train.  Our  police  will  pull  us  off 
at  Chalons  if  they  see  us.  They  nearly  caught  us  at 
the  last  stop. ' ' 

"I'll  not  tell,"  said  I.  Then  we  were  all  merry 
together. 

"Have  you  ever  been  in  the  States?"  asked  one. 

"God  bless  your  heart,  I've  been  there  for  two 
hundred  years!"  Then  we  fraternized  more  than 
ever. 

"The  French  military  police  are  all  right,"  they 
fold  me.    "It's  ours  that  make  the  trouble  for  us." 

Presently  I  returned  to  my  compartment,  and  there 
found  that  I  had  given  wrong  information  to  those 
three  confiding  boys.  We  were  due  at  Chalons  at 
six,  thirty  minutes  sooner  than  I  had  told  them,  and 
it  was  now  five  minutes  to  six.  I  hastened  back  to 
them  with  this  news,  at  which  they  immediately 
rushed  tumbling  into  the  lavatory. 

"If  the  police  comes,"  said  one,  "tell  him  there's 
a  lady  in  here."  And  they  locked  the  door.  The 
little  indicator  by  the  handle  turned  to  "occupied." 
I  should  think  it  was ! 

I  stood  guard.    We  reached  Chalons  at  six  and  left 


CHEMIN   DE   FER   DE   L'EST         189 

it  at  six-twenty-two.  No  police  came,  but  one  pas- 
senger tried  the  door  three  times,  and  I  shall  never 
forget  his  face.  As  the  train  began  to  move  out  of 
the  station,  I  felt  that  I  had  done  my  duty,  and  re- 
turned to  our  compartment,  and  narrated  the  circum- 
stances to  my  companions.  Just  as  I  was  finishing, 
the  three  boys  came  by,  looked  in,  and  on  seeing  me 
they  all  laughed  joyously. 

"We  made  the  riffle!"  cried  one. 

On  the  whole  I  think  that  the  Chemin  de  Fer  de 
l'Est  is  my  favorite  railway  in  France. 


XVII 


BAK-LE-DUC 


If,  in  the  silence  of  that  wounded  land  which  I 
had  come  to  see,  one  visited  a  town  not  wholly  dead 
and  empty,  those  living  there  were  making  the  best 
of  it,  were  meeting  life,  with  such  a  spirit  and  aspect 
that  their  effort  was  simply  never  visible.    One  had 
come  to  know  so  well  the  seal  which  the  war  had  set 
upon  all  faces,  that  attention  noted  it  no  longer,  but 
took  it  for  granted,  unaware,  and  looked  at  other 
things.    At  the  time  I  was  immersed  in  my  journeys, 
the  sorrow  of  it  prevailed  in  my  imagination ;  today, 
as  I  think  back,  it  is  the  pride  in  human  nature  which 
can  so  splendidly  meet  distress  as  these  French  were 
doing  that  dwells  chiefly  in  memory.     Never  was 
such  horror  dealt  to  any  people,  never  have  any 
people  so  indomitably  faced  it,  not  at  the  moment 
of  stress  alone,  but  in  the  forlorn  prolongation  of 
its  aftermath.    Here  at  this  little  town  of  Bar-le-Duc, 
though  noon  was  gone  and  we  had  watched  ruins  since 
early  morning,  the  work  of  bombs  still  was  visible. 
Far  behind  us  on  the  Marne — a  hundred  miles,  I 
suppose — we  had  passed  the  wrecks  of  way-stations, 
such  as  Dormans,  and  here  also  the  station  roof  was 
shattered,  walls  had  jagged  holes  in  them,  and  in  the 
platform  itself  was  a  descent  to  some  hiding-place, 
where  the  railway  people  had  gone  during  hours 
when  the  Huns  were  sailing  overhead. 

The  town  had  suffered  in  no  degree  comparable 
to  such  places  as  Albert,  through  which  the  tides  of 

190 


BAR-LE-DUC  191 

obliteration  had  raged  back  and  forth.  Bar-le-Duc 
stood  on  the  outer  rim  of  a  storm-centre  and,  saved 
from  the  worst,  had  not  been  put  out  of  existence, 
but  retained  all  its  features  whole — streets,  houses, 
statues,  churches,  park;  and  its  shops  were  open, 
with  iron  crosses  and  other  still  rather  fresh  relics 
for  sale.  After  getting  away  from  the  ruins  at  the 
station,  you  might  not  have  seen  anything  to  remind 
you  that  war  had  paid  this  place  a  visit,  but  for  those 
painted  words  upon  so  many  dwellings:  "Shelter," 
"Cellar,"  "Vaulted  Cellar."  These,  which  I  had 
first  noticed  at  Noyon,  and  met  continually  since  in 
many  towns,  showed  that  war  had  flown  here  through 
the  air.  It  was  the  starting  point  of  what  came  to 
be  known  as  the  Sacred  Road,  over  which  rolled  the 
endless  chain  of  camions  that  during  so  many  months 
brought  supplies  to  Verdun.  This  road  had  been 
a  creation  of  General  Petain's  resourceful  mind; 
without  it  Verdun  could  not  have  stood,  with  it  he 
was  able  to  make  good  his  quiet,  great  word,  * '  They 
shall  not  pass."  The  main  line  of  the  Eastern  railway 
is  connected  at  Bar-le-Duc  with  Verdun  by  a  branch, 
a  feeble  affair  with  but  a  single  track  in  1914;  and 
one  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  French  Govern- 
ment, had  it  been  the  German  Government,  would 
have  been  careful  to  make  it  solid  and  ready  for  war 
emergencies,  long  in  advance  of  the  event. 

In  the  streets  and  by  the  station,  some  of  our  offi- 
cers and  men  in  khaki  made  visible  the  presence  of 
America,  and  the  rule  of  the  military  police  was, 
as  we  found  one  afternoon,  still  rigorous.  As  we 
strolled  along  the  Boulevard  de  la  Rochelle,  the  time 
of  day  suggested  tea  to  our  captain  and  beer  to  me, 
so  we  sat  ourselves  at  a  table  on  the  pavement  in 


192  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

front  of  the  Cafe  de  Commerce.  We  could  hardly 
have  touched  our  chairs  when  out  flew  the  lady  who 
commanded  the  cafe  while  her  husband  was  in  the 
army.  We  must  come  inside,  she  declared;  it  was 
not  allowed  for  an  officer  in  uniform  to  be  seen  drink- 
ing in  public. 

"But,  madame,"  protested  our  captain,  almost 
piteously.    ' '  Since  it  is  only  tea  that  I  ask  for  1 ' ' 

"No,  no,  no,  monsieur  le  Capitaine,  it  won't  do  at 
all.  I  cannot  serve  you  here,  not  even  tea.  If  it  was 
only  your  American  police,  they  are  so  kind!  I 
would  not  fear  them,  but  our  French  police,  it  is 
they  that  are  the  bad  ones,  ah  yes !  You  must  not 
stay  here.    Enter,  I  pray  you." 

We  entered,  and  retired  meekly  far  back  into  the 
corner,  where  my  friends  had  their  tea  and  I  my 
beer.  At  another  table  sat  two  healthy  little  boys, 
one  in  knickerbockers,  each  sedately  having  his  glass 
of  beer  too. 

Upon  the  wall  above  our  table  still  hung  the  procla- 
mation of  the  Armistice,  its  words  tingling  with  joy 
and  patriotism. 

Mairie  de  Bar-le-Duc 
Mes  chers  Concitoyens 
Le  Jour  de  gloire  est  arrive! 


Vive  1  'Alsace-Lorraine ! 
Vive  la  France!     Vive  la  Republique! 
Vivent  a  jamais  nos  Allies! 

le  Maire, 

J.  Moulin. 

En  Mairie  a  Bar-le-Duc,  11  November,  1918. 

The  eleventh  of  November,  1918 !    The  brightness 
of  that  day,  not  yet  six  months  ago,  was  even  now 


BAR-LE-DUC  193 

beginning  to  darken.  Some  minds  already  saw  that 
the  work  of  the  politicians  was  going  to  undo  much 
of  the  soldiers'  work,  and  that  the  "new  heaven  and 
new  earth,"  announced  to  mankind  by  the  Prime 
Minister  of  Great  Britain,  were  of  the  same  substance 
as  the  rest  of  his  abundant  phrases.  Here  in  Bar-le- 
Duc  an  American  officer  perceived  and  spoke  the 
truth  about  the  allotting  of  Shantung,  torn  from 
China  by  Germany,  to  Japan. 

"Japan,"  he  said,  "sat  into  the  game  and  never 
spoke  till  she  knew  her  time  for  a  bluff  had  come. 
Then  she  told  them  that  if  they  didn  't  pass  the  stolen 
goods  on  to  her,  she  wouldn't  join  their  League  of 
Nations.  They  passed  the  goods  all  right,  but  that 
puts  ridicule  on  the  League  of  Nations." 

"Our  doughboys,"  said  I,  "seem  as  anxious  to 
leave  France  as  Mr.  Wilson  was  to  come  to  it." 
With  military  correctness  he  ignored  this  refer- 
ence to  his  commander-in-chief.  "The  French  are 
equally  anxious  to  move  back  into  their  houses,  which 
we  are  occupying ;  in  Verdun  a  Frenchman  is  living 
in  the  tunnel  of  the  citadel,  waiting  for  Americans 
to  get  out  of  the  only  habitable  room  left  in  his 
bombed  house." 

"I've  been  urging  some  of  our  boys,"  said  I,  "not 
to  be  too  hard  on  the  French." 

"It's  the  howlers  who  tell  of  French  prices,"  he 
said.  "In  a  town  in  Oklahoma  where  I  was,  prices 
were  just  as  bad.  Personally  I  have  met  more  gen- 
erosity here  than  at  home.  In  this  town  there  is  a 
manufacturer  whose  sheds  I  have  been  using  as  a 
garage.  He  had  to  remove  all  his  stuff  to  make  room 
for  me.  I  wanted  to  pay  him,  but  he  refused  to 
accept  a  cent.    He  said,  'You  came  over  and  saved 


194  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

us.  It's  very  little  for  me  to  do.*  Keep  up  your 
talk  to  the  complainers,"  he  added.  "It's  astonish- 
ing how  few  understand  that  we  must  make  allow- 
ances for  other  people's  ways." 

One  of  the  "ways"  of  Bar-le-Duc  is  renowned, 
and  no  allowances  have  to  be  made  for  it.  I  allude 
to  a  sort  of  currant  preserve;  and  when  my  second 
glass  of  beer  was  finished,  I  asked  the  lady  of  the 
cafe  for  some,  but  she  had  none.  In  response  to 
my  expression  of  genuine  woe,  she  told  me  how  to 
find  my  way  to  the  factory  where  the  delicacy  was 
made. 

It  was  not  at  all  far  away,  I  was  soon  ringing  the 
bell. 

They  had  none. 

"No,  m'sieur.     None  since  four  months." 

"Madame,  mademoiselle!"  I  cried,  "don't  say 
that  to  me." 

"Alas,  monsieur,  not  one  since  four  months." 

"Madame,  mademoiselle,  I  have  come  expressly 
six  thousand  kilometres.    Pensez  y,  madame!" 

"Ah,  m'sieur,  it  is  you  Americans  who  have  them 
all  eaten.    You  are  such  sweet  tooths." 

"Oh,  madame,  now  I  shall  go  home  six  thousand 
kilometres,  blushing  for  the  greediness  of  my  com- 
patriots." 

"Eh,  m'sieur,  it  is  not  a  mortal  sin,  the  greediness ! 
But  see,  when  we  have  sugar  again,  we  shall  be  able 
to  make  your  currants." 

"Ah!"  I  exclaimed.  "It  is  the  absence  of  sugar, 
not  the  presence  of  Americans." 

"It  is  the  sugar,  monsieur.  But  without  doubt  the 
Americans  quickly  discover  what  is  good." 

Currants  might  be  wanting  in  Bar-le-Duc,  but  the 


BAR-LE-DUC  195 

French  spirit  was  here,  smiling,  joking,  going  on 
with  existence  undaunted.  The  commerce  of  the 
place  was  killed,  not  the  courage  that  would  bring 
it  again  to  life. 

The  town  lies  enclosed  by  hills  quite  near  together, 
and  to  the  south  it  has  climbed  part  way  up  their 
sides;  so  that  one-half  the  population  looks  down 
from  among  its  plentiful  trees  upon  the  roofs  steeply 
mingling  in  the  bottom  of  the  cup.  It  is  only  a  little 
cupful  of  France,  but  into  it  great  tradition  has  been 
stirred.  The  statues  of  two  marshals,  born  here, 
rise  in  their  separate  squares,  and  on  the  pedestal 
of  one,  Exelmans,  stand  the  words  that  Napoleon 
spoke  to  him:  "One  cannot  be  braver  than  thou." 
I  came  upon  this  after  crossing  a  bridge  with  a  little, 
ancient  tower  upon  it.  The  bridge  was  small,  the 
river  narrow,  but  a  marshal  of  Napoleon  had  walked 
there,  and  long  before  his  day,  the  Dukes  of  Bar. 
The  little  river  ran  between  a  vista  of  poplars,  be- 
neath arches  of  stone;  and  though  the  houses  along 
the  quays  by  the  poplars  were  not  fine  dwellings,  old 
French  masons  had  proportioned  their  lines,  and 
French  grace  filled  this  formal  avenue  made  by  the 
river  upon  which  their  windows  faced.  Yes;  Bar- 
le-Duc  has  more  than  currants  to  give  its  inhabitants. 
Over  the  entrance  to  its  shady  little  park  is  the 
admirable  text:  "Plus  penser  que  dire" — "More 
thought  than  speech";  and  a  notice  within  the  gate 
reminds  one  that,  "this  park  being  common  prop- 
erty, is  placed  under  the  safeguard  of  the  towns- 
folk." The  back  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  forms  one 
corner  of  these  lawns  and  walks,  stone  steps  lead 
down  from  it  to  them,  and  its  walls  rise  above  them, 
not  high,  but  proportioned  by  old  French  masons, 


196  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

and  stained  with  the  seasoned  hues  of  time.  On 
each  side  of  the  stone  steps  couches  a  lion  with  a 
conversational  expression;  one  lion  seems  slightly 
to  be  pouting,  as  if  he  would  say:  "Lunch  was  not 
what  I  had  a  right  to  expect;"  the  other  smiles 
sleepily,  and  he  would  certainly  say:  "Lunch  came 
up  to  my  ideas."  The  sky  was  blue  as  I  sat  on  a 
bench  near  these  decorous  beasts,  water  trickled 
down  the  carvings  of  a  fountain  into  a  slumberous 
basin,  flowers  framed  the  borders  of  the  lawns  and 
daisies  starred  their  sod.  The  tops  of  trees  new- 
leaved  rose  like  green  islands  in  the  sea  of  steep 
roofs,  and  loveliness  hung  quietly  over  the  town. 
It  is  by  no  means  a  town  of  the  first  rank  in  beauty 
or  interest,  but  its  present  is  mellowed  with  the  glow 
of  messages  from  the  past.  Did  our  doughboys,  when 
they  had  eaten  up  the  currants  of  Bar-le-Duc,  find 
any  of  this  nourishment  for  the  mind  and  spirit,  or 
had  wise  Kansas,  on  his  island,  been  right  when  he 
said  that  unless  you  brought  education  with  you  to 
France,  France  would  teach  you  nothing  except  riper 
modes  of  sensuality?  I  wondered  if  the  stone  arches 
over  the  river,  its  gracious  avenue  of  poplars,  the 
little  old  tower  on  the  bridge,  the  marshal  of  Napo- 
leon, the  wise  legend  over  the  garden-gate,  "Plus 
penser  que  dire,"  had  not  perhaps  left  a  memory 
and  a  yearning  here  and  there  in  the  American  mind ; 
if  perhaps  some  of  our  soldiers,  after  getting  back  to 
their  own  thriving,  well-drained,  well-lighted  towns 
of  the  West,  might  not  sometimes  miss  that  inward 
illumination  which  shone  here  as  in  every  old  town 
of  France,  and  which  even  the  most  improved  light- 
arid-power  plant  cannot  provide. 


XVIII 

ALONG   THE   SACRED   WAY 

These  French  and  these  sights  of  France  that  I 
was  seeing,  hour  after  hour,  and  day  after  day,  would 
sometimes  string  to  its  highest  tautness  every  nerve 
of  attention,  and  sometimes  slack  and  stupefy  me 
into  those  trances  wherein  I  seemed  for  a  while  to 
notice  nothing  of  the  world  external ;  the  only  thing 
that  they  never  did  was  to  stale  my  interest  in  this 
spectacle  of  gigantic  ruin:  not  a  mile  of  it,  as  it 
unfolded  through  those  four  hundred  miles  that  I 
travelled  right  and  left  within  it,  ever  grew  dull 
through  sameness.  If  this  seem  strange,  if  any  one 
who  has  merely  been  told  about  the  ravage,  wonder 
how  a  panorama  of  changeless  wreck,  of  houses, 
farms,  churches,  villages,  and  forests  chewed  up  and 
spit  out  by  the  jaws  of  war,  can  fail  to  weary  in  the 
end,  it  is  because  the  visible  unrolling  of  all  this 
nourished  and  enlarged,  not  knowledge  alone,  but 
also  emotion.  The  variety  was  within,  and  never 
died.  No  battle  was  like  another  nor  any  individual 
story  of  man  or  woman :  so  that  into  one 's  streaming 
thoughts  came  constantly  the  words,  "This,  too,  the 
Germans  did,"  or  "This,  too,  France  suffered,"  and 
absorption  grew  under  it  as  does  the  scholar's  who 
pursues  a  chosen  path,  or  as  something  new  fills 
every  moment  the  over-sheltered  body  that  has  gone 
for  breath  to  the  mountains  or  the  ocean.  Such  a 
breath  of  pity  and  awe  blew  here,  that  into  the  stream 

197 


198  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

of  thought  often  came  also  the  words,  "Who,  after 
seeing  this,  can  ever  be  the  same  again?" 

Our  first  few  miles  out  of  Bar-le-Duc  are  nearly 
a  blank,  scarce  more  than  a  general  green  and  love- 
liness of  spring  present  upon  changing  slopes,  no 
clearer  memory  than  this,  because  the  nerves  of 
attention  had  slacked  and  I  was  thinking  of  Nau- 
heim,  not  of  La  Voie  Sacree.  I  had  strolled  about 
the  German  resort  in  May  and  June,  1914,  admiring 
the  order,  the  system,  the  thoroughness,  the  thought- 
ful care  of  detail,  the  plan  wrought  out  to  success. 
During  one  of  these  walks  a  Zeppelin  had  sailed  over 
us,  and  this  apparition  suggested  that  Germany 
would  devote  the  same  care  to  planning  war  as  she 
did  to  planning  peace. 

"It  is  mute  likely,"  said  I  to  my  companion,  "that 
in  their  "War  Office  a"t  Berlin  they  have  blue  prints 
and  specifications  of  every  bridge,  tunnel,  signal- 
tower,  and  siding  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad." 

In  less  than  four  weeks,  Ferdinand  the  Archduke 
had  been  assassinated  at  Serajevo ;  in  less  than  eight, 
more  Americans  than  we  were  beginning  to  suspect 
the  care  which  Germany  devoted  to  planning  war. 
One  evening  of  that  first  winter,  after  the  French  at 
the  Marne  and  the  British  at  Ypres  had  blocked 
German  -plans,  and  468  miles  of  fortified  trench  ran 
across  France  from  the  Channel  to  Switzerland,  I 
was  sitting  at  dinner  next  the  president  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad,  and  I  repeated  to  him  my  remark 
at  Nauheim. 

"Whv  that's  not  so  far  from  the  truth,"  he  said. 
Then  I  learned  a  tale  of  German  thoroughness,  new 
and  typical. 

As  far  back  as  1903,  there  was  usually  an  engineer- 


ALONG   THE   SACRED   WAY  199 

ing  attache  at  the  German  Embassy  in  Washington. 
To  him  or  his  emissaries  the  Pennsylvania  railroad 
was  accustomed  to  furnish  free  transportation  as  well 
as  information  about  mechanical  appliances  and  im- 
provements, including  all  the  blue  prints  that  they 
asked  for.  But  Germany  did  not  return  the  compli- 
ment. In  March  1904,  when  the  Pennsylvania's 
chief  signal  engineer  came  home  from  a  sort  of 
roving  commission  to  visit  and  study  certain  Euro- 
pean railway  systems,  he  made  in  his  report  parti- 
cular mention  of  the  courteous  treatment  accorded 
his  committee  by  all  railroad  officials  with  whom  he 
came  in  contact  in  England  and  Scotland ;  but  about 
Berlin  he  was  entirely  silent.  This  was  because 
in  Berlin  he  had  found  the  door  shut,  and  was  told 
that  the  Kaiser  had  the  key.  In  consequence  of  this 
experience,  the  president  in  1905  officially  declined  a 
request  to  furnish  free  transportation  to  an  engineer 
then  arriving  from  Germany.  Later,  in  the  days 
when  frightfulness  was  spreading  flames  and  human 
lamentations  wider  and  ever  wider  through  defence- 
less villages  and  miles  of  horror,  the  railroad  whose 
blue  prints  Berlin  had  secured  was  led  to  do  what 
it  could  to  make  safe  the  yards  and  system  of  its 
tracks  on  Long  Island,  in  case But  fright- 
fulness in  uniform  did  not  step  ashore  over  here ;  it 
merely  sent  vessels  to  the  bottom  along  our  coast 
just  after  our  Secretary  of  War  had  come  back  from 
Europe  and  told  us  that  the  war  was  3,000  miles 
away.  In  August  1914,  the  British  fleet  became  our 
wall  of  safety,  and  behind  this  we  dwelt  unscathed. 
I  was  brought  back  from  these  memories  by  our  cap- 
tain, who  showed  me  two  ' '  pill  boxes ' '  bordering  the 
road,  little  squat  turrets,  solid,  with  peep  slits  for 


200  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFOKTH 


•  w.. 


guns,  and  fantastically  painted.  Nothing  but  a  bomb 
falling  straight  upon  their  roofs  could  smash  them, 
and  their  roofs  were  colored  according  to  the  laws 
of  optical  illusion  to  escape  the  eye  of  the  aviator. 
Some  of  these  contrivances  suggested  large  fat  toad- 
stools, others  the  machines  on  dinner  tables  for  grind- 
ing pepper.  From  their  insides,  men  could  train  guns 
as  from  a  compass  upon  all  points  and  be  almost 
safe.  After  we  had  left  this  lonely  couple  behind  us, 
the  scars  of  war  thickened  rapidly,  trenches,  barbed 
wire,  roofless  walls;  and  the  silence  was  here,  wait- 
ing for  us,  even  though  some  of  the  trenches  were 
already  being  filled,  some  of  the  barbed  wire  already 
rolled  up  from  the  liberated  fields. 

Do  you  know  the  extent  of  these  fields  of  France 
which  frightfulness  in  uniform  laid  low  according 
to  its  careful  plan?  To  read  the  cold  figures  is  one 
thing,  to  feel  what  they  mean  is  quite  another:  the 
dead  decimals  and  integers  do  contain,  but  they  also 
entomb,  the  story;  they  need  translating  into  life. 
Of  farmland,  seed  and  harvest  land,  1,757,000  hec- 
tares were  devastated,  and  if  to  this  be  added  the 
land  that  was  in  pasture  and  forest,  the  total  is 
3,800,000  hectares.  A  hectare  is  2.471  acres — nearly 
two  acres  and  a  half;  and  so,  in  terms  of  acres,  the 
devastation  covers  9  million  389  thousand,  800  acres ; 
and  as  640  acres  make  one  square  mile,  14  thousand 
and  670  square  miles  of  France  were  devastated. 
This  exceeds  the  area  of  certain  of  our  smaller  states, 
but  it  would  not  cover  quite  half  of  Maine,  not  quite 
a  third  of  Pennsylvania ;  and  when  you  come  to  some 
of  our  Western  States,  in  their  vastness,  it  would 
be  well-nigh  swallowed  up — Texas  alone  is  some  forty 
thousand  square  miles  larger  than  the  whole   of 


ALONG   THE    SACRED   WAY  201 

Franco.  But  what  if  we  had  been  devastated,  not 
in  this  same  actual  amount,  but  in  the  same  propor- 
tion to  our  total,  as  France  was?  To  lose  one  leg 
is  a  25  per  cent,  loss  for  a  dog,  a  50  per  cent,  loss  for 
a  man:  the  whole  area  of  France  is  204  thousand 
and  92  square  miles,  and  its  devastated  region  is 
between  one-thirteenth  and  one-fourteenth  of  the 
whole.  The  area  of  the  United  States  is  three  mil- 
lion square  miles,  we  are  more  than  fourteen  times 
as  large  as  France,  and  if  one-fourteenth  of  our  soil 
had  been  devastated,  it  would  cover  more  than  two 
hundred  thousand  square  miles — the  whole  area  of 
Maine,  New  Hampshire,  Vermont,  Massachusetts, 
Rhode  Island,  Connecticut,  New  York,  New  Jersey, 
Pennsylvania,  Delaware,  Maryland,  and  some  of 
Ohio.  I  select  the  northern  and  eastern  part  of  our 
country  for  my  comparison,  not  only  because  it  is 
geographically  the  same  portion  of  France  which  has 
suffered,  but  also  because  it  is  economically  parallel, 
the  great  coal,  steel,  wool,  and  other  centres  of  in- 
dustry being  preponderantly  situated  in  the  north 
and  east  of  France,  as  they  are  in  New  England  and 
the  Middle  States. 

I  have  been  at  pains  to  understate  the  matter  in 
my  own  multiplications  and  divisions,  by  disregard- 
ing certain  decimals  which  would  have  somewhat  in- 
creased my  final  figures,  although  not  enough  to  go 
beyond  Ohio.  Unless  these  calculations  err,  a  man 
could  start  in  a  car  at  Vanceboro,  Maine,  and  go 
through  Bangor,  Portland,  Worcester,  Springfield, 
Albany,  Utica,  Syracuse,  Rochester,  and  Buffalo  to 
Pittsburgh,  and  not  reach  the  western  limit  of  devas- 
tation. He  could  wind  to  the  north  and  the  south  of 
this  route,  and  pass  Manchester,  Lawrence,  Lowell, 


202  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

Fall  River,  Bridgeport,  Trenton,  Bethlehem,  Reading, 
and  Scranton,  finding  all  these  towns  totally  or  par- 
tially destroyed,  their  great  manufacturing  plants 
not  only  silent,  but  deliberately  paralyzed  by  the 
removal  of  their  machinery  and  the  flooding  of  their 
mines.    Not  alone  these  larger  places  whose  names  I 
have  set  down,  and  others  of  the  same  kind  that  I 
have  left  unmentioned,  but  also  every  isolated  dwell- 
ing and  farm  and  village  between  them  would  be 
wrecked,  just  as  Lille,  Lens,  St.  Quentin,  Chauny, 
St.  Gobain,  Coucy-le-Chateau,  Soissons,  Reims,  and 
Verdun,  and  the  homes  and  hamlets  between  were 
wrecked.     Four  thousand  and  twenty-two  villages 
and  towns  were  destroyed  in  France,  and  of  these, 
every  one  east  of  the  front  in  1917  was  scientifically 
blown  up,  in  obedience  to  the  principle  laid  down  by 
the  rule  of  the  German  Staff  before  the  war  began— 
that    the    enemy   be   spiritually   and   commercially 
crushed.    The  attempt  at  spiritual  crushing  is  visible, 
for  instance,  in  the  cathedral  of  St.  Quentin,  where 
ninety  holes  were  systematically  cut  in  its  support- 
ing pillars  to  receive  dynamite.    It  was  never  placed 
there.     The  pillars  stand,  supporting  still  a  noble 
church  which  is  only  half  in  ruins.     In  their  1918 
retreat,  the  Huns  had  not  expected  the  Allies  to  reach 
St.  Quentin  quite  so  quickly,  and  hence  (as  at  Laon), 
they  were  surprised  like  burglars  at  work  drilling  a 
safe,  and  had  to  flee. 

The  attempt  at  commercial  crushing  is  visible,  for 
instance,  at  Lens.  Before  the  war,  these  mines  pro- 
duced annually  four  million  tons  of  coal,  eight  hun- 
dred thousand  of  coke,  thirty  thousand  of  tar ;  their 
employees  lived  in  eight  thousand  houses.  When 
the  war  was  done  and  the  French  came  back,  of  these 


ALONG   THE    SACRED   WAY  203 

eight  thousand  houses,  sixty  that  could  be  repaired 
were  left.    When  the  Huns  came  to  Lens  in  1914, 
they  stopped  the  pumps  in  the  mines  and  measured 
the  rising  water  each  day.    It  did  not  rise  fast  enough 
to  please  them,  so  they  broke  the  jackets  of  cast  iron 
which  encased  the   shafts,  and  through  the  holes 
blasted  in  them,  the  water  from  the  wet  surrounding 
stratum  of  soil  poured  in  to  speed  the  general  drown- 
ing.   Fifty  millions  of  cubic  metres  of  water  flooded 
the  mines.    The  machinery  was  smashed,  or  removed 
to  Germany.    Lens  was  reduced  to  a  sort  of  ash  heap. 
The  Huns  when  they  came,  set  fire  at  once  to  the 
plant  where  the  naphtha  and  tar  were  made,  because 
the   sight  of  the  flames  made  fireworks  for  their 
diversion.     They  watched  them  at  a  safe  distance, 
laughing.    Ten  years  after  the  Armistice,  the  mines 
of  Lens  may  be  again  whole  and  completely  at  work 
— in  1928 — perhaps.    Lens  is  merely  one  of  the  in- 
dustrial centres  which  was  destroyed  in  order  to 
crush  France  commercially.     Of  homes,  where  men 
and  women  and  children  lived,  three  hundred  and 
four  thousand  were  totally  obliterated,  and  two  hun- 
dred and  ninety  thousand  practically — by  cannon,  or 
by  fire,  or  by  mines.    This  we  may  call  a  mixture  of 
spiritual  and  commercial  crushing.    This  devastated 
area,  though  it  was  but  a  fourteenth  part  of  the  whole 
of  France,  paid  nevertheless  nearly  one-fifth  (18.5%) 
of  the  whole  taxes,  even  as  New  England  and  the 
Middle  States,  because  of  their  denser  population 
and  more  concentrated  area  of  manufacture,  pay 
more  of  the  taxes  than  such  areas  as  Texas,  New 
Mexico,  Arizona,  Utah,  Nevada,  and  California  and 
much  of  the  South. 
Besides  poison  gas  and  like  inventions  for  the 


204  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

killing  of  men,  German  ingenuity  created  devices  for 
the  killing  of  things — the  incendiary  fire  engine,  for 
example,  which  rolled  methodically  through  village 
streets,  setting  fire  to  houses  instead  of  putting  them 
out ;  or  the  pastilles  of  the  chemist  Dr.  Otswald,  con- 
veniently portable,  and  so  skilfully  compounded  that 
one,  if  lighted  and  left  in  a  hall  or  dining-room,  would 
suffice  to  reduce  the  dwelling  to  cinders.  They  had, 
too,  a  machine  for  tearing  up  railroads  as  you  went. 
This  was  hitched  behind  the  tender  of  a  locomotive, 
and  as  the  engine  puffed  along,  it  rooted  up  the 
sleepers  and  rails  behind  it.  Of  the  main  lines  in 
France,  1,500  miles  were  destroyed,  and  1,490  miles 
of  local  and  branch  lines — 2,990  miles  in  all.  The 
total  mileage  of  railways  in  France  is  31,992 — more 
than  one-tenth  was  wrecked.  If  one-tenth  of  our 
railway  mileage  were  wrecked,  it  would  be  25,682: 
that  very  nearly  equals  the  whole  of  the  Boston  and 
Maine,  the  New  York  and  New  Haven,  the  New  York 
Central,  and  the  Pennsylvania  systems;  it  comes  to 
more  than  double  the  whole  Southern  Pacific. 

Upon  our  journey  in  the  wind  and  the  rain  from 
Amiens,  through  the  battle  lands  of  the  Somme,  the 
road  to  Arras  beyond  Mailly-Maillet,  near  Beaumont 
Hamel  hill,  had  perished  in  a  world  of  featureless 
mud  and  ghost-like  splinters  of  trees.  That  was  but 
one  case.  Throughout  this  devastated  fourteenth 
part  of  France,  country  and  town  alike  were  locked 
away  from  the  living  world  by  the  obliteration  of 
the  thoroughfares.  The  traveller  threaded  his  way 
through  broken  landscape  and  broken  village,  easily 
blocked,  often  obliged  to  turn  back,  if  he  was  not 
well  guided.  So  we  had  found  it  beyond  Amiens, 
so  next  near  Soissons  and  Reims,  so  now,  where 


ALONG   THE   SACRED   WAY  205 

flowed  the  waters  of  the  Meuse  and  the  Moselle.  The 
Sacred  Way,  the  great  highroad  over  which  sup- 
plies had  gone  to  Verdun  during  its  fearful  siege, 
was  still  one  of  the  few  open  channels.  From  this 
we  had  turned  off,  not  many  miles  out  of  Bar-le-Duc, 
and  as  we  penetrated  deeper  into  the  destroyed  coun- 
try amid  the  thickening  vestiges  of  violence,  the  won- 
der returned  as  to  how  this  region  was  now  sup- 
plied, how  did  food  or  anything  at  all  reach  those 
who  lived  here  f  The  answer  was  simple — the  silence 
was  the  answer.  Almost  no  one  did  live  here  now. 
Like  the  lady  who  had  come  back  from  Nevers  to 
look  for  her  house  at  Noyon,  and  the  brave  wife  with 
the  gash  in  her  forehead  at  the  estaminet,  most  of 
those  whose  homes  these  ruins  once  had  been  had 
taken  refuge  in  other  parts  of  France,  the  old,  the 
women,  the  children;  and  very  few  of  them  had  as 
yet  returned.  Their  return  was  beginning ;  they,  too, 
like  all  France,  were  determined  to  come  back  and 
to  go  on,  and  the  signs  of  their  determination  were 
the  small  patches  of  ground,  cleared  already  of 
barbed  wire  and  shells,  lying  like  scattered  aprons 
amid  the  rough  bristling  wreck  of  the  land.  Thirty- 
two  thousand,  nine  hundred  and  fifty-eight  miles  of 
French  roads  had  been  destroyed,  and  six  hundred 
and  forty-eight  miles  of  canals.  Four  million  and  a 
half  people  had  lived  in  the  devastated  fourteenth 
of  France — one-tenth  of  the  whole  population.  Their 
live-stock  had  been  taken,  thirteen  hundred  thou- 
sand head ;  twenty  thousand,  five  hundred  and  thirty- 
nine  of  their  manufactories  had  been  levelled  to  the 
ground,  or  gutted  of  their  machinery,  and  of  them- 
selves, two  million  and  seven  hundred  and  thirty-two 
thousand  had  been  driven  out  of  their  homes ;  while 


206  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

the  remainder,  nearly  two  million,  had  during  four 
years  been  forced  to  pay  war  levies,  and  to  work 
half  starved  beneath  the  hand  of  the  invader,  which 
often  held  the  lash ;  or  else  they  had  known  exile  and 
prison. 

Is  it  wonderful  that  devastated  France  was  silent? 
It  seemed,  as  one  went  onward  and  onward  through 
the  barbed  wire  and  the  trenches  and  the  empty 
walls,  as  if  nothing  would  ever  be  able  to  break  this 
silence.  Our  American  artillery,  during  four  hours 
of  the  brief  battle  of  St.  Mihiel,  had  fired  more  than 
one  million  shells.  The  rusting  fragments  of  those 
shells  were  now  to  be  gathered  up  by  the  peasant 
whose  pastures  or  fields  they  littered.  If  one  million 
shells  were  scattered  in  four  hours  at  one  place,  what 
was  the  number  that,  during  four  years,  had  torn  the 
ground  in  all  places'?  The  question  cannot  be  an- 
swered, but  to  ask  it  is  enough.  And  the  barbed 
wire? — those  skeins  of  fierce  strings  that  stretched 
tight  across  such  uncounted  acres,  making  thick  webs, 
enmeshing  hills  and  valleys.  The  amount  of  this 
has  been  computed — there  were  three  hundred  and 
ten  million  square  metres  of  it  (a  metre  is  more  than 
a  yard).  Of  trenches  to  be  filled  up,  there  were  two 
hundred  and  seventy-seven  million  cubic  metres. 

We  passed  the  town  of  St.  Mihiel  without  stop- 
ping, and  left  these  assembled  ruins  behind  us  to 
come  to  others  and  again  others,  both  assembled  and 
solitary.  If  we  looked  up  a  hill,  its  side  was  pocketed 
with  shelter  holes,  if  we  looked  down  at  a  plain  it  was 
drilled  with  dug-outs,  ditched  with  trenches,  blurred 
with  barbed  wire — worried  out  of  all  semblance  to 
serene  nature;  and  if  we  went  through  a  wood,  its 
trees  were  naked  shreds.     Germans,  French,  and 


ALONG   THE    SACRED   WAY  207 

Americans  had  fought  hereabouts.  The  flames  and 
rage  of  conflict  had  been  less  blinding,  perhaps,  than 
in  the  days  of  the  Somme  in  1916,  but  quietness  had 
departed  hence  in  September  1914.  Two  Crown 
Princes  of  the  Huns,  William  and  Rupprecht,  had  set 
on  Verdun  during  the  first  battle  of  the  Marne.  Their 
success  might  have  made  that  battle  a  failure.  They 
failed.  Soon  they  began  again,  and  by  the  end  of 
the  month,  St.  Mihiel  was  German  territory.  It  made 
the  bottom  of  a  pocket  not  unlike  the  one  which  Lu- 
dendorff  dug  to  the  Marne.  The  Germans  stayed 
in  it  until  we  drove  them  out  exactly  four  years 
later;  but  they  were  seldom  left  in  perfect  peace, 
either  along  the  north  or  the  south  edge  of  their 
pocket.  We  were  going  now  along  its  south  edge, 
following  the  road  to  Pont-a-Mousson,  following  it 
too  quickly ;  for  here  were  the  Bois  Brule,  and  Apre- 
mont,  Flirey,  Limey,  presently  each  in  turn  to  brush 
our  very  sides,  each  brooding  with  tales  and  mem- 
ories, each  deserving  to  be  stopped  at  and  listened 
to  with  reverence  for  the  dead  and  the  surviving, 
while  not  far  away,  to  our  left,  were  the  Mont  Sec  and 
Seicheprey.  We  could  not  stop,  we  could  not  listen 
to  any  wayside  tales,  though  it  seemed  as  if  the  earth 
and  the  torn  trees  themselves  were  waiting  to  tell 
them.  At  Brule  Wood,  right  on  the  south  seam  of 
the  pocket,  fifty  yards  and  no  more  separated  the 
German  trenches  and  the  French  lines,  and  so  it  was 
for  months :  scarce  ever  a  day  without  flames,  explo- 
sions, death — a  man  must  not  speak,  must  not  smoke, 
could  not  sleep — and  eight  days  of  such  a  life  were 
generally  the  limit  that  human  nerves  could  stand: 
each  spent  battalion  had  to  go  away  and  rest,  and  be 
replaced  by  a  fresh  one.    Once,  in  April  1915,  after 


208  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

three  days  of  fierce  fighting  for  a  trench,  it  was  taken 
and  new  men  sent  to  keep  it.  Upon  these  the  Ger- 
mans suddenly  fell  and  threw  them  into  fright  and 
flight.  The  trench  was  going  to  be  lost.  This  was 
seen  by  an  officer  who  had  helped  to  capture  it.  He 
was  resting  with  his  men,  but  he  called  upon  them  to 
go  back,  and  back  they  went  with  him.  They  took  the 
trench  again  from  the  Germans ;  but  it  cost  time  and 
struggle  and  so  many  lives  that  the  exhausted  living 
faltered  among  the  corpses.  In  this  moment  of 
suspense  the  officer  saw  defeat  approaching  and — let 
his  name  be  told  once  more — Adjutant  Jacques  Peri- 
card  looked  around  in  desperation  at  his  wounded  and 
fallen  men,  and  cried : 

1 '  Debout,  les  morts ! ' ' 

And  they  rose  and  went  on.  So  was  one  trench 
retaken  at  Bois  Brule. 

How  many  tales  of  death  and  life  and  the  soul  of 
man  should  we  know,  could  the  ground  or  trees  in 
those  fourteen  thousand,  six  hundred  and  seventy 
square  miles  of  devastated  France  whisper  them? 
And  what  traveller  who  has  once  felt  that  great 
silence  which  we  entered  first  at  Compiegne  will  ever 
wholly  forget  it? 

From  Brule  Wood  we  came  at  once  to  the  nothing 
which  had  once  been  Apremont — no  house  left  in  it, 
holes  and  heaps  where  the  church  had  stood ;  and  a 
few  steps  off,  a  symbol  of  Germany,  solid  and  sub- 
stantial, a  shelter  of  concrete.  This  thick  thing  wore 
an  ornament  on  its  wall,  a  German  gun,  well  carved. 
Symbols  of  Germany  were  everywhere,  always  thick 
built,  dominating;  thick  statues,  thick  monuments, 
thick  tombstones,  heavily  lettered.  Just  here  by 
crumbled  Apremont  was  a  whole  Hun  village  quar- 


ALONG   THE    SACRED   WAY  209 

ried  deep  in  the  hillside,  full  of  elaborate  comfort 
and  relics  of  efficiency ;  the  slopes  terraced,  plants  on 
the  sills,  carved  woodwork,  stolen  tapestry ;  little  nice 
things,  all  stolen  from  the  neighboring  piles  of  rub- 
bish which  had  been  French  homes  once.     This  was 
just  here  by  the  road.    Just  such  another  was  there 
across  the  valley  on  the  opposite  seam  of  the  pocket — 
Les  Eparges.   In  that  snug  burrow  of  the  Huns  was  a 
system  of  electric  lights,  an  officers '  club,  an  elevator, 
a    narrow-gauge    railway; — and    more    little,    nice 
things,  stolen  from  crumbled  Fresnes  and  crumbled 
St.  Eemy,  Hannonville,  Vigneulles,  all  lying  shapeless 
in  the  plain  below,  symbols  of  Germany  too; — but 
over  in  Germany,  no  such  symbols ;  not  a  shell  hole, 
not  a  trench,  not  a  scar ;  not  a  church  tower  fallen,  not 
a  single  stone  of  a  single  home  displaced ;  every  pic- 
ture safe  on  the  wall,  every  chair  safe  in  the  room, 
every  silver  spoon  safe  in  the  drawer.     In  France 
were  four  thousand  destroyed  villages,  twenty  thou- 
sand   destroyed    factories,    five    hundred    thousand 
homes  in  dust.     Of  little,  nice  things,  pictures,  silver, 
home  tokens  and  treasures,  personal  property,  in 
short,  the  Germans  had  destroyed  or  stolen  twenty- 
one  billion  francs '  worth ;  beside  the  barbed  wire  and 
the   trenches,   there   were   forty-two   million   cubic 
metres  of  rubbish  to  be  got  rid  of  by  a  country  that 
had  one  million,  three  hundred  and  eighty-five  thou- 
sand men  killed  outright  in  action — workers  who 
never  would  rebuild  any  more  than  many  of  the  two 
million  and  a  half  of  wounded.     About  three  and  a 
half  per  cent,  of  the  whole  French  population  were 
killed.     Had  a  proportionate  loss  been  ours,  our  dead 
would  have  numbered  every  man  of  the  2,084,000  who 
got  to  France,  and  more  than  1,000,000  more  at  home. 


210  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Thus  France  had  her  maimed  country  to  rebuild  with 
her  maimed  hands. 

In  1916,  true  to  the  system  and  the  thoughtful  care 
of  detail  of  Germany,  some  German  composed  a 
manual  of  482  pages  for  the  benefit  of  the  German 
Army.  It  was  issued  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Quartermaster  Department.  It  tabulated  the  de- 
structions accomplished  so  far,  and  the  further 
destructions  contemplated.  It  was  based  on  that 
part  of  the  Hun  doctrine  which  forms  the  supplement 
to  atrocity  to  non-combatants  in  order  to  win  quickly 
— commercial  destruction  of  the  enemy  in  order  to 
make  gold  from  blood  and  iron.  French  industry 
was  to  be  put  out  of  business,  because,  for  instance, 
"  French  railroads,  in  consequence  of  the  destruction 
of  car  shops,  will  have  to  equip  themselves  in  Ger- 
many"; by  the  destruction  of  looms,  because,  "re- 
suming operation  will  be  very  difficult,  and  an  enor- 
mous market  for  German  products  will  be  thus 
created."  The  sugar  industry  "must  disappear 
from  the  world  market  for  two  or  three  years ' ' ;  and 
it  is  pointed  out  that  "mines  are  paralyzed  for  years 
by  the  dismantling  of  the  machinery  and  the  flooding 
of  the  pits." 

Armed  with  this  book,  and  with  the  other  tools 
needful,  the  German  soldiers  paid  their  visits  to  the 
various  mines  and  factories  in  this  fourteenth  of 
French  territory,  and  left  behind  them,  destroyed 
with  Germany's  thoughtful  care  of  detail,  55%  of 
the  total  national  coal-producing  capacity,  94%  of 
the  wool  manufacturing,  90  of  the  linen,  90  of  the 
mineral,  83  of  the  smelters,  70  of  the  sugar  mills, 
60  of  the  cotton  mills,  45  of  the  electric  power — 
I  will  not  continue  the  list;  is  this  not  enough  to 


ALONG   THE    SACRED   WAY  211 

suggest  why  the  devastation  of  this  particular  four- 
teenth part  of  France  should  deprive  the  country  of 
almost  one-fifth  of  its  taxes'?  Many  of  the  destroyed 
industries  which  I  have  named  will  show  more  clearly 
to  the  reader  the  economic  parallel  between  this 
region  and  our  New  England  and  Middle  States.  In 
1870  Germany  overran  France,  and  in  1871  she  de- 
manded an  indemnity  after  her  victory.  Not  an  inch 
of  Germany  had  been  hurt  then,  any  more  than  now. 
It  was  France  that  was  hurt,  France  that  was  beaten, 
and  France  that  paid.  The  Germans  occupied  her 
soil  and  her  cities  until  every  last  cent  was  paid. 
They  withdrew  by  instalments,  according  as  they  re- 
ceived instalments  of  the  indemnity.  This  time, 
though  France  is  hurt  and  France  is  victorious,  she 
sees  reparations  that  were  promised  her  by  treaty 
incessantly  cut  down,  postponed,  excused.  Too  many 
people  both  in  talk  and  in  books  use  indemnity  and 
reparation  as  meaning  the  same  thing.  They  are 
quite  different ;  uninjured  Germany  made  France  pay 
an  indemnity  in  1871,  devastated  France  demands 
reparation  from  Germany. 

Our  wheels  beyond  Apremont  rolled  eastward  upon 
and  across  the  front  line  of  battle.  We  had  no  time 
to  look  at  any  ruins^  but  time  was  not  needed  to  see 
that  they  were  close  at  hand,  sometimes  near  enough 
almost  to  be  touched,  sometimes  up  a  hill  or  down  a 
hill;  Bouconville  village  like  a  mouth  with  but  few 
teeth ;  and  next,  a  sullen  glimpse  of  barbed  wire  and 
distance  stretching  to  sombre  hills;  and  after  this, 
the  shattered  tower  of  Beaumont  Church,  sticking  up 
against  the  sky  with  ruins  encumbering  its  feet. 
Xivray,  where  the  French  right  made  contact  with 
our  1st  Division's  left  on  the  night  of  September 


212  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

LI,  1918,  was  scarce  two  miles  off,  and  Seicheprey  was 
nearer  still.  We  should  have  liked  to  stand  in  Seiche- 
prey,  upon  the  ground  won  in  the  spring  of  1918  from 
the  Germans  by  our  26th  Division,  known  as  the 
Yankee.  That  was  our  first  little  independent  fight, 
the  beginning  of  the  Yankee  Division's  renown.  We 
were  sorry  not  to  visit  the  spot.  Beyond  it  not  very 
far  was  the  Mont  Sec,  a  sullen  hump  rising  out  of 
the  plain.  There,  too,  we  should  have  liked  to  climb — 
into  its  elaborate  tunnels,  upon  its  fortified  top, 
whence  the  Germans  during  four  years  had  watched 
the  plain.  In  the  shape  of  a  smoke  screen,  the  cur- 
tain fell  upon  their  long,  safe  watch.  We  should  have 
liked  to  stare  down  at  the  land  where,  behind  the 
smoke  screen,  our  1st  Division  advanced  twelve 
miles  from  Xivray  north  into  the  heart  of  the  pocket, 
and  met  near  Vigneulles  the  Yankee  Division  coming 
south  from  Les  Eparges ;  so  that  the  Germans  were 
stitched  into  their  pocket  before  they  could  get  out 
of  it  as  they  were  planning  to  do ;  and  the  pocket  be- 
came ours,  and  we  put  them  into  it — 16,000  prisoners, 
and  443  guns,  with  other  useful  chattels,  and  very 
little  loss  to  ourselves.  It  was  all  quickly  done — over 
in  48  hours — and  then  we  pushed  our  line  west  of  the 
Moselle  farther  than  had  been  laid  down.  Our  divi- 
sions fought  harder  and  longer  soon  after  this  in  the 
Argonne ;  but  their  action  at  St.  Mihiel  accomplished 
what  Foch  asked  of  them,  performed  it  smoothly  and 
speedily ;  and  what  was  done  here  was  the  doing  of 
an  American  army,  commanded  by  an  American 
general,  its  individuality  attained  and  asserted,  not 
without  some  friction  and  delay.  Four  French  and 
fifteen  American  divisions  constituted  the  force  as- 
sembled here,  and  from  Beaumont  east  to  the  Moselle 


ALONG   THE    SACRED   WAY  213 

at  Pont-a-Mousson,  our  road  ran  where  many  Ameri- 
can feet  must  have  trod :— f eet  of  the  Rainbow  Divi- 
sion, of  Wood's  Own,  of  the  Second,  of  the  Red 
Diamond,  of  the  Alamo— all  along  this  way  through 
Flirey  (a  total  wreck)  and  Limey,  another,  and 
between  ceaseless  holes  and  graves  and  fragments  of 
many  things.  A  railway  bridge  was  one  of  the  larger 
fragments  somewhere  near  Flirey,  toppled  and 
slanting  helpless ;  no  trains  ran  here,  or  for  a  great 
distance  to  our  west.  To  our  east  we  came  upon 
one  at  Pont-a-Mousson,  steaming  and  crowded  with 
passengers  from  Paris.  It  was  on  its  way  along  the 
Moselle  down  to  Metz.  Its  open  rails  were  like  the 
open  road  we  had  come,  a  single  working  channel  of 
communication,  lonely  among  countless  channels  that 
were  stopped.  Of  tunnels  and  bridges  the  Germans 
had  destroyed  3,603. 

In  Pont-a-Mousson,  bruised  by  shells,  is  a  square, 
the  Place  Duroc,  beautiful  and  French,  with  its 
arcade  in  cracks  but  not  in  ruins — though  by  the  ninth 
month  of  the  war  Pont-a-Mousson  had  been  bom- 
barded one  hundred  and  ten  times.  Here  indeed  I 
longed  to  pause  amid  the  surviving  charm  before 
plunging  into  more  desolation,  but  time  forbade  it. 
This  was  the  east  limit  of  our  drive.  We  turned, 
re-crossed  the  Moselle,  and  bore  toward  Thiaucourt. 
We  were  all  the  while  within  the  battle-ground  of  our 
first  American  Army's  first  exploit.  We  passed 
between  pale,  broken  trees,  and  concrete  caves,  and 
many  crosses  where  the  dead  lay;  and  everywhere 
here,  since  1914,  blood  had  flowed,  German  and 
French,  long  before  our  divisions  came.  Sometimes 
we  got  out  to  walk  the  ground  and  listen  to  our  young 
captain,  who  had  fought  here.    The  places  had  names 


214  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

— The  Widow's  Wood,  called  so  by  the  Germans,  and 
another  the  Priest's  Wood,  named  by  the  French; 
and  within  its  dead  and  tragic  trees  was  a  spring 
where  both  sides  came  by  turns  for  water,  no  man 
shooting  while  his  enemy  drank.  Sometimes  we 
returned  into  sight  of  the  sullen,  distant  hump  of  the 
Mont  Sec,  rising  over  open  miles  of  loneliness,  some- 
times woods  shut  us  in,  and  now  and  then  we  passed 
more  shattered  houses ;  but  whatever  it  was,  earth  or 
building,  it  had  always  the  look  of  a  witness  who  has 
seen  something  which  has  blinded  it  to  all  other 
sights,  so  that,  no  matter  what  else  may  pass  before 
it,  it  will  for  ever  see  only  this.  Our  divisions  had 
swept  across  here,  the  82nd,  the  90th,  the  5th,  the 
89th,  the  2nd,  as  they  pushed  the  Germans  out  of  the 
pocket.  This  work  done,  they  were  fresh  still  and 
ready,  without  any  rest,  for  more;  but  their  high 
spirits  had  left  no  echo  behind,  and  the  ground  over 
which  their  fierce  gay  steps  had  gone  bore  no  trace  of 
their  gaiety.  The  Somme  had  been  more  terrible  to 
the  eye,  and  so  had  Berry-au-Bac ;  greater  sadness  I 
had  not  yet  seen  than  in  this  region  about  Thiaucourt, 
and  in  the  Woevre  plain  beyond  that  ruined  town. 

Thiaucourt,  St.  Benqit,  Woel,  Joncourt,  St.  Hilaire, 
Fresnes-en-Woevre,  Etain — these  are  the  names 
which  plot  our  course  from  Pont-a-Mousson  west  and 
north  towards  our  night's  lodging.  All  along  the 
way,  we  were  skirting  at  no  great  distance  the  bound- 
ary of  the  St.  Mihiel  advance,  where  the  line,  for  the 
time  being,  had  been  stabilized.  At  Fresnes  we  were 
upon  this  line ;  when  we  reached  Etain  we  had  passed 
beyond  it  to  the  north,  and  I  understood  more  about 
the  ' '  operations  in  the  Woevre  district. ' '  There  was 
much  water  because  there  had  been  much  rain.    It 


ALONG   THE    SACRED   WAY  215 

lay  to  one  side  or  the  other,  in  irregular  ponds  reflect- 
ing the  afternoon  sky,  or  in  round  pools  which  were 
shell  holes,  or  in  oozing  trenches,  with  barbed  wire 
posts  sticking  and  leaning  out  of  the  ooze.  Water 
and  plain  stretched  away  to  right  and  left ;  far  to  the 
left  Les  feparges  was  dimly  visible,  sullen  like  the 
Mont  Sec,  a  ridge  which  had  become  a  gulf  of  mud; 
where  half  a  hill  slid  down,  where  planks  were  laid 
five  times  and  sank,  where  men  wounded  and  not 
wounded  went  down  and  could  not  be  saved.  As  the 
light  grew  grey  and  more  grey,  its  veil  softened  the 
sharp  edge  of  the  ruins.  The  tower  of  the  church 
at  Etain  was  the  last  ruin  that  we  saw  clearly.  Etain 
had  been  bombarded  for  thirteen  hours  one  day  in 
August  1914,  and  again  on  the  day  following.  Many 
people  were  burned  in  its  flames  or  buried  in  its 
ruins.  The  last  message  sent  by  a  girl  who  stayed  at 
her  telephone  post  informing  Verdun  every  fifteen 
minutes  how  the  destruction  progressed,  was:  "A 
bomb  has  just  fallen  in  the  office." 

As  we  had  watched  them  soften  and  dissolve  in  the 
twilight  of  preceding  journeys,  again  this  afternoon 
the  forms  of  all  ragged  objects  in  the  wide  wet  plain 
of  Woevre  melted  into  the  enveiling  grey  of  dusk. 
Whether  these  towns  had  been  wrecked  by  French 
or  American  or  German  shells,  all  were  the  victims 
of  German  invasion.  Latest,  as  always,  to  remain 
distinct  were  the  dead  trees.  Their  skeletons  stuck 
out  of  the  level  dimness  like  crooked  fingers  scratch- 
ing the  horizon.  These  woods  had  been  lacerated  by 
shells ;  others  all  the  way  from  the  war  zone  across 
France  to  the  Pyrenees  had  been  levelled  by  the  axe 
to  keep  the  war  going.  To  meet  our  heavy  needs, 
more  were  chopped  down  when  our  soldiers  came. 


216  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Until  the  war,  the  thrift  of  France  had  kept  her  grow- 
ing forests  ahead  of  her  use  of  their  timber.  Had  she 
wasted  them,  as  we  wasted  ours  during  the  19th  Cen- 
tury, an  American  forester  has  said  that  the  Allies 
might  have  lost  the  war.  Some  will  recover  in  from 
ten  to  twenty  years,  it  will  take  others  thirty  years, 
and  France  meanwhile  must  rebuild  as  best  she  can. 
Just  to  our  west  and  left,  lay  the  forest  out  of  which 
the  Germans  had  come  down  upon  Verdun  in  Feb- 
ruary 1916.  Beyond  it,  a  little  south  of  Spincourt, 
we  turned  west  from  the  main  road,  reached  a  village 
corner,  passed  through  the  sound  of  American  voices, 
and  soon  after  came  to  a  stop.  Here  was  our  night's 
lodging.  It  was  long  since  we  had  left  what  the 
French  call  La  Voie  Sacree,  but  our  course  had  been 
never  once  away  from  ground  where  privation  and 
grief  and  courage  lived,  and  many  thousands  had 
died.  Every  road  that  we  had  travelled  was  a  sacred 
way. 


XIX 


WHERE   WE   SLEPT  WELL 


It  was  like  a  scene  in  a  play:  once  again  reality 
suggested  this  image.  In  the  early  stages  of  our 
journey,  when  devastation  was  a  sight  novel  to  our 
American  eyes,  the  rearing  splinters  of  homes,  the 
walls  and  windoAvs  without  insides,  had  seemed  like 
the  unreal  aspect  of  what  meets  one  behind  the  cur- 
tain. That  was  over  long  ago.  It  never  looked  to 
us  like  stageland  now,  we  knew  it  well  as  war  land, 
real,  mangled,  dumb,  its  hollows  thick  with  unheard 
sorrow  and  the  crowded,  unseen  dead.  From  this 
deeply  familiar  actuality  through  which  we  had  been 
moving  but  a  few  minutes  ago,  we  walked  up  some 
steps  and  entered  upon  the  serene  welcome  of  candles 
lighting  a  hall  and  pleasant  stairs.  An  American 
captain,  whose  voice  came  from  the  South,  greeted  us 
at  the  hall-door,  and  behind  him  shone  the  candles. 
They  were  tall,  like  those  in  a  church,  and  so  arranged 
as  to  make  almost  beautiful  the  almost  plain  interior 
of  this  house.  They  were  few  in  number,  and  stood 
at  various  levels,  one  or  two  here  in  the  hall  below, 
one  or  two  upon  the  newels  of  the  banisters  which 
framed  the  right-angled  ascent  of  the  stairs  in  two 
short  flights  to  a  gallery  above,  and  one  or  two  along 
the  gallery,  upon  which  several  doors  opened.  They 
gave  light  enough  to  see,  yet  left  the  agreeable  mys- 
tery of  limits  and  corners  not  quite  visible,  of  hos- 

217 


218  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

pitable  nooks  beyond,  which  might  extend  to  many 
secluded  wings  and  passages.  Had  this  Southern 
captain,  perhaps,  learned  his  art  of  candlelight  in 
some  plantation  house,  into  whose  old,  ample  rooms 
not  electricity,  or  gas,  or  even  oil,  had  intruded?  I 
never  asked  him ;  but  if  ever  he  sees  this  page,  he  will 
know  how  much  more  I  thought  than  I  said  about  our 
nights  beneath  this  roof,  where  he  was  master  for  a 
while. 

"If  only  we  might  stay  here  for  a  week!"  I 
thought.  The  candles  and  the  quiet  were  so  good 
after  shell  holes,  and  barbed  wire,  and  ruins,  and 
dead  trees. 

The  seeing  eye,  the  shaping  hand,  and  a  military 
sense  of  order  had  filled  this  bare  house  with  objects 
collected  from  war  and  arranged  with  skill.  Merely 
to  study  the  contents  of  its  rooms  and  what  hung  on 
its  walls  would  have  taught  one  as  much  as  many 
lectures.  To  look  at  them  while  the  captain  or  his 
lieutenant  talked  about  them  was  better  than  any 
lecture.  Whoever  made  the  collection  was  able  to 
draw  upon  a  rich  territory,  and  had  not  wasted  his 
chance.  This  farm  lay  in  the  Woevre  plain,  and 
battles  had  been  fierce  on  every  side  but  its  north. 
The  Meuse  was  not  far  off  one  way,  the  Moselle  an- 
other, Verdun  was  some  twelve  miles  southwest  of  it ; 
distilling  itself  from  various  marshes  in  the  Woevre 
where  blood  must  have  flowed,  the  little  river  Loison 
slid  through  its  domain.  The  village  near  by,  where 
we  heard  American  voices,  had  been  occupied  by 
Germans  since  1914,  never  disturbed  until  the  end. 
They  had  left  their  mark — various  marks — and  from 
their  bill-posters  forbidding  this  and  that  and  the 
other,  a  humorous  selection  had  been  made,  and  these 


WHERE   WE    SLEPT   WELL  219 

now  helped  to  decorate  the  walls  and  edify  the  guests. 
How  many  of  these  guests  were  edified  by  the 
veritable  museum  of  war  which  surrounded  them,  is 
something  I  have  often  wondered.  Taken  over  by 
our  army  soon  after  November  11,  1918,  (I  surmise) 
this  French  farmhouse  became  the  resting-place  for 
travellers  privileged  as  guests  of  the  American  army 
to  visit  this  part  of  the  devastated  region  which  was 
allotted  to  our  care.  For  their  benefit  the  wonderful 
museum  and  relief  maps  had  been  arranged,  and  for 
their  welcome  the  tall  candles  burned  in  this  hall. 
They  certainly  gave  it  the  look  of  a  scene  set  equally 
well  for  mystery,  or  crime,  or  comedy. 

Any  one  who  has  had  to  drink  water  made  sanitary 
by  chlorine  will  not  forget  its  flavor.  This  water  is 
the  only  circumstance  which  I  would  have  had  differ- 
ent at  our  meal ;  and,  knowing  the  South,  I  am  sure 
that  our  host,  had  the  regulations  permitted  him, 
would  have  decanted  for  our  refreshment  nothing  of 
the  sort.  What  we  ate  I  cannot  remember,  but  only 
that  it  was  good  enough  to  turn  conversation  upon  the 
cook.  She  had  four  service  stripes,  the  captain  said. 
Three,  but  soon  to  get  a  fourth,  his  lieutenant  cor- 
rected ;  and  for  a  moment  I,  in  my  ignorance,  imag- 
ined wildly  that  she  had  been  in  the  trenches  and  gone 
over  the  top.  But  she  had  merely  boiled,  roasted, 
stewed,  and  otherwise  concocted  their  meals  during  a 
period  equivalent  to  the  stripes — and  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  they  were  afraid  of  her.  These  commis- 
sioned officers  with  decorations  for  bravery  smiled 
about  their  cook ;  but  to  me  it  looked  remarkably  like 
the  smile  of  men  in  the  proximity  of  a  powerful  per- 
sonality. Candor  bids  me  confess  that  the  few  words 
which  I  exchanged  with  her  may  have  helped  this 


220  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

opinion.  I  went  out  to  see  her,  to  make  her  compli- 
ments on  an  omelet.  Upon  my  standing  at  the 
threshold  of  her  kitchen,  she  turned  and  contem- 
plated me.  She  was  wide,  she  was  thick,  she  was 
round,  she  had  a  shining  forest  of  black  hair,  a  thick 
throat,  an  eye  of  domination,  and  a  moustache.  I 
imagined  that  my  opinion  of  her  omelet  would 
warm  the  influence  that  proceeded  from  her.  It  did 
not.  Her  reply  was  civil — but  I  didn  't  stay.  If  they 
weren't  afraid  of  her,  an  army  commission  must 
toughen  you.  Any  civilian  would  have  given  it  up  as 
I  did. 

The  captain  and  the  lieutenant  talked  of  the  war  in 
general,  and  of  incidents  in  particular ;  a  very  pleas- 
ant meal.  And  if  they  did  not  stand  in  awe  of  their 
cook,  I  know  that  they  were  afraid  of  the  lady  of  the 
house.  She  was  not  here  now,  of  course ;  but  since 
their  occupation  of  her  premises,  she  had  paid  her 
house  visits  enough  to  make  a  formidable  impression 
upon  the  captain. 

' '  She 's  crazy, ' '  he  told  me. 

"From  the  war!"  I  asked,  prepared  to  hear  some- 
thing painful. 

"I  think  her  state  of  mind  antedates  that,  but  it 
may  have  been  emphasized  by  it.  They  tell  me  that 
at  the  dinners  she  used  to  give,  she  put  all  the  old 
people  close  together  at  one  end  of  this  table  and  all 
the  young  away  far  off  at  the  other,  so  that  the  young 
ones  shouldn't  hear  her  jokes." 

"I  suppose,"  said  I,  "that  as  they  grew  older  she 
moved  them  up. ' ' 

"Well,  from  what  they  say  about  her  jokes,"  re- 
turned the  captain,  "I'm  not  sure  that  I  am  old 
enough  to  be  moved  up  for  quite  a  while  yet." 


WHERE   WE    SLEPT   WELL  221 

' '  I  wish  that  I  could  have  met  her, ' '  I  sighed ; ' '  she 
would  not  have  respected  my  youth." 

''Last  time  she  came  in  here,"  said  the  captain, 
1 '  she  saw  one  of  her  old  family  portraits  on  the  wall. 
Heaved  a  log  right  through  it.  She  didn't  like  it 
because  German  officers  had  been  looking  at  it  four 
years." 

Like  many  men  from  the  South,  this  captain  main- 
tained a  certain  gravity  of  bearing  rarely  practised 
by  Northerners,  who  often  plunge  into  a  jocosity 
somewhat  premature.  His  stiffness  had  been  aug- 
mented by  almost  daily  experience  with  the  American 
congressman  whom  he  had  to  make  welcome.  To  find 
that  we  were  not  politicians  was  a  visible  relief  to 
him;  on  this  first  evening  he  steadily  unbent.  He 
told  us  that  the  British,  New  Zealanders,  and  Ameri- 
cans had  exchanged  whisky  at  the  front. 

"A  better  exchange  than  personalities,"  said  I. 

Some  men  of  our  Bloody  Hand  Division  had  given 
rise  to  merriment  unintentionally  at  times  when 
laughter  was  scarce.  This  division  was  not  wholly 
organized  at  the  time  of  its  landing  in  April  1918,  and 
it  was  broken  up  and  brigaded  with  the  French.  Six 
hundred  were  killed,  two  thousand  wounded.  The 
survivors  seemed  to  be  enjoying  France.  They  had 
met  with  a  social  success  beyond  any  which  they  knew 
at  home. 

"Those  darkies  are  having  the  time  of  their  lives 
now,"  said  the  captain ;  " they  have  known  less  agree- 
able days.  One  of  their  regiments  was  with  the  4th 
French  Army  at  Wesserling.  Some  soldiers  built  a 
fire  with  the  purpose  of  boiling  a  kettle.  They  set 
four  unexploded  shells  upright,  laid  the  fuel  between 
them,  set  the  kettle  on  top  of  them,  and  lighting  the 


222  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

fire,  sat  down  to  watch  the  kettle  boil.  One  of  them 
was  sent  for  by  his  commanding  officer,  and  was  away 
for  a  few  minutes.  Upon  returning  to  the  spot,  he 
found  no  kettle,  no  fire,  no  comrades,  and  a  large  hole 
in  the  October  mud.  Immediately  he  rushed  back, 
and  cried  out  to  the  officer : 

"  'Cap'n,  dat  coffee  he  done  blow  up!' 
"  Yes,"  he  continued,  "when  they  get  home,  they'll 
never  need  to  stop  talking.  A  couple  of  them  got 
more  fighting  than  they  approved  of  over  on  the  west 
edge  of  the  Argonne,  and  they  were  running  away. 
They  reached  one  of  the  long  straight  roads  bordered 
with  poplars  and  marked  with  the  distance,  and  along 
this  they  ran  on  and  on.     At  length  one  said : 

"  'Say,  dis  hyeh  is  de  longest  graveyahd  I  ever 
saw.' 
"And  his  better-informed  mate  corrected  him: 
"  'Them's  not  gravestones,  them's  kilommetees.' 
The  captain  gave  us,  by  his  use  of  one  happy  word, 
an  indelible  picture  of  the  survivors  of  the  Bloody 
Hand  Division,  elated  by  social  success  in  France. 

"When  the  darkies  mount  guard,"  said  he,  "they 
don't  walk;  they  syncopate." 

A  wood  fire  burned  in  the  room  where  we  sat  after 
supper  until  an  early  bed-time.  An  upright  piano 
was  there  and  open,  with  a  look  of  having  also  merited 
service  stripes.  I  asked,  did  it  belong  to  the  house? 
It  did,  and  had  been  there  during  the  four  years  of 
German  occupation. 
"Then,"  said  I,  "when  they  had  to  get  out  and  you 

came  in,  did  you  find  the  piano ?"     I  did  not 

complete  my  sentence. 

They  nodded.     "We  had  to  scrub  it  out." 

I  told  them  the  remark  of  a  major  in  charge  of  the 


WHERE   WE    SLEPT   WELL  223 

interned  Germans  at  Fort  Oglethorpe,  in  whose 
company  I  had  visited  the  internment  camp  at  that 
place  during  the  preceding  fall.  We  had  spent  more 
than  an  hour  in  going  over  its  various  parts ;  where 
they  ate,  where  they  slept,  where  they  took  the  air, 
where  their  possessions  were  stored.  They  were 
made  much  more  comfortable  than  our  own  people 
who  were  being  trained  to  fight  them  over-seas.  At 
the  end  of  our  inspection,  I  asked  the  major: 

"Have  you  made  any  generalization  about  these 
Germans?  They  are  of  every  station  from  ragged 
bomb-throwers  to  New  York  merchants  and  Prussian 
Junkers.  There  is  even  the  leader  of  a  famous  sym- 
phony orchestra  here.  Have  you  been  able  to 
observe  any  one  trait  which  they  have  in  common  ? ' ' 

"Yes,"  replied  the  major.  "One  and  all,  their 
personal  habits  are  filthy  beyond  my  willingness  to 
describe." 

This  caused  our  captain  no  surprise :  he  had  seen 
the  piano.  I  told  him  that  it  had  fallen  to  my  lot  to 
read  certain  confiscated  and  impounded  letters,  writ- 
ten by  the  conductor  of  the  famous  symphony  orches- 
tra. These  had  led  the  court  to  give  him  his  choice 
of  submitting  to  internment  without  more  ado — or  of 
being  prosecuted  under  the  White  Slave  Act.  They 
contained  passages  which  would  stain  any  decent  lips. 

As  my  years  have  increased,  bed-time  has  grown 
less  unwelcome  than  once  it  used  to  be — but  I  could 
have  listened  all  night  to  this  captain  and  his  lieu- 
tenant. Perhaps  it  is  as  well  for  the  reader  that  I  can 
remember  distinctly  but  one  of  the  curiosities  of 
warfare  which  they  showed  us;  otherwise  I  might 
have  been  tempted  to  describe  every  object  in  that 
museum.     You  have  sometimes,  no  doubt,  walked 


224  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

behind  the  counters  of  chemists'  shops  into  the  pre- 
cincts where  they  keep  their  jars  and  bottles  and 
retorts.     If  so,  you  may  have  derived  an  impression 
of  cylinders  and  cones  and  tubes  of  various  unearthly 
shapes,  standing  on  shelves  or  the  floor.     That  is  in  a 
way  what  the  museum  looked  like,  only  the  unearthly 
shapes  were  not  of  glass,  but  metal.     Shells  and 
bombs  of  many  varieties  had  been  gathered  here,  and 
some  of  the  engines  that  projected  them — such  as 
could  be  got  conveniently  inside  a  house :  so  that  you 
saw  the  instruments  which  had  blasted  the  salient  of 
St.  Mihiel  and  the  plain  of  Woevre  into  that  welter 
of  dead  fields,  dead  houses,  and  dead  men,  through 
which  our  journey  upon  this  day  had  been.     There 
they  stood.     Some  were  German,  some  French,  some 
American.     These  glistened,  those  were  dark.     Some 
tapered  to  sharp  points.     Others  were  round.     One 
specimen  was  not  larger  than  a  baseball.     One  was 
thicker  than  a  big  man  and  as  high  as  my  shoulder. 
Smaller  shells  stood  on  exhibit  like  flower  vases  when 
you  are  looking  for  wedding  presents.     I  touched 
them  here  and  there,  while  the  lieutenant  explained 
their  natures  and  uses,  how  far  they  could  fly,  how  big 
a  hole  they  could  dig,  how  many  bodies  at  once  they 
could  behead  and  disembowel.     Their  assemblage  ex- 
haled a  silence — these  bombs  that  could  deafen — but 
a  silence  perfectly  different  from  that  which  hung 
over  devastated  France.     The  lieutenant  put   one 
little  brass  bulb  into  my  hand,  and  asked,  could  I 
guess   what  it  was?     How  could   I?    He   took  it, 
seemed  to  press  and  turn  it,  and  perhaps  touched 
some  mechanism  at  its  top,  and  it  split  apart  in  halves 
with  saw  teeth.     Its  insides  were  not  simple  enough 
for  me  to  be  able  to  describe  them  clearly.     It  was  a 


WHERE   WE    SLEPT   WELL  225 

mechanical  carrier  pigeon;  German,  I  think.  In  its 
brass  guts  a  message  could  nestle  and  fly  from  a  gun 
safe  to  its  destination ;  and  I  believe  that  it  had  some 
sort  of  fuse  of  special  construction  which  popped  or 
spat  or  flickered  or  otherwise  indicated  its  identity- 
after  it  had  alighted  at  the  proper  address.  Bombs, 
belts,  guns,  grenades — altogether  an  interesting,  sin- 
ister company,  with  gas-masks  among  it  like  faces 
left  behind,  staring  glassily. 

Less  sombre  were  the  maps  in  another  room,  artil- 
lery fire  contour  maps,  and  relief  maps  of  terrain. 
Upon  the  ridges  and  hollows  of  these  you  could  look 
as  from  an  aeroplane  upon  the  Woevre  or  the  Ar- 
gonne,  and  follow  where  our  divisions  had  climbed 
down,  or  climbed  through.  There  was  the  Meuse 
running,  and  the  Moselle,  and  the  little  Aire  trickling 
along  the  bristly  rises  of  the  Argonne,  and  Varennes 
and  Cheppy  and  Grand  Pre  and  Mouzon  and  Sedan, 
that  we  were  to  see,  with  Thiaucourt  and  the  Bois 
Brule  and  all  the  rest  which  we  had  seen.  Thus,  with 
the  point  of  a  pencil  touching  here  the  Mont  Sec  and 
there  Les  Eparges  or  Vigneulles,  one  could  clearly 
follow  the  pivoting  of  our  1st  and  26th  Divisions  on 
those  two  September  days  when  they  stitched  the 
Germans  into  the  St.  Mihiel  pocket. 

Not  by  going  over  the  actual  hills  and  valleys  of 
any  battle,  nor  yet  from  study  of  their  miniature  on  a 
map,  can  one  completely  grasp  the  detail  and  the  total 
of  what  happened.  Both  are  needed — first  the  real 
country  and  after  it  the  map.  Thus  it  results  that  I 
could  very  nearly  explain  St.  Mihiel  and  the  Meuse- 
Argonne,  because  I  went  over  their  ground  and  fol- 
lowed later  a  pencil  point  over  those  relief  maps  in 
the  house  where  we  slept  well :  whereas  about  Belleau 


226  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Wood,  over  which  we  only  walked,  I  am  quite  vague, 
although  it  was  a  much  simpler  action.  The  reader 
need  not  dread  any  attempt  of  mine  to  explain  to  him 
either  St.  Mihiel  or  the  Meuse-Argonne.  Let  him 
study,  with  its  subjoined  maps,  the  report  of  General 
Pershing. 

While,  through  relief  maps  and  tales  of  darkies  and 
coffee-pots,  we  were  enlarging  our  knowledge  and 
equipping  our  intelligence,  the  doughboys  were  danc- 
ing. I  doubt  if  they  went  to  bed  as  early  as  we  did. 
The  captain  had  sent  them  all  off  to  the  neighboring 
village  of  Billy-sous-Mangiennes.  I  don't  know  how 
many  of  these  Billys  there  are  in  France,  or  in  which 
of  them  our  doughboys  put  their  American  arms 
about  French  waists  to  the  accompaniment  of  music, 
and  after  the  music  had  ceased.  The  captain  told  us 
that  wherever  they  went  they  got  up  a  dance. 


XX 

THE  COOK  AND  THE  DOUGHBOY 

1 '  Splendid  day.     The  first  one  in  France. ' ' 

I  find  that  the  hour  at  which  I  wrote  this  in  my 
diary  up  in  my  bedroom  was  six-thirty  the  next 
morning.  Eave-martins  were  flying  in  and  out  of  the 
big  windows,  a  chirping  of  neighboring  birds  filled 
the  air,  and  upon  looking  out  I  saw  many  in  the  trees 
and  farmyards  at  their  May  morning's  work.  There 
was  a  glitter  from  the  sun  that  made  the  young  leaves 
glisten,  and  a  glimpse  of  wet  meadows  beyond  the 
enclosure,  sparkling  with  little  pools.  It  was  strange 
to  see  in  the  midst  of  this,  just  by  the  house,  a 
wrecked  aeroplane ;  this  glared  out  of  the  serenity  of 
everything  else.  I  do  not  think  that  it  had  fallen 
here,  but  that  they  had  brought  it  as  an  out-door  part 
of  the  collection. 

Voices  in  the  house  were  audible  through  the  seams 
in  the  bare  plank  floors,  or  through  many  large 
windows,  all  of  them  open ;  and  as  I  strolled  about  in 
a  free  exploration  of  the  second  floor,  a  voice  beneath 
came  up  to  me,  and  I  stood  still. 

''Bon  jour."  The  words  were  quite  correct,  but 
their  pronunciation  had  been  born  very  far  away 
from  France  indeed,  although  French  experience  was 
audible  in  it ;  I  did  not  need  to  see  him  through  the 
floor  to  know  that  he  was  a  doughboy. 

"Bon  jour,"  some  one  answered  him.     I  did  not 

227 


228  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFOETH 

need  to  see  her  either.  That  was  the  cook.  Her 
voice  went  with  her  eye  and  the  Olympic  amplitude  of 
her  bosom :  not  harsh,  by  no  means  soprano,  and  with 
many  lazy  overtones  of  command.  He  seemed  to  be 
walking  about. 

" Comment  te  trouves-tu  ce  matin?"  she  inquired. 

"0  tray  bien,  mairsee." 

What  was  comical  was  his  perfectly  correct  speech 
and  his  khaki  French. 

"As  tu  bien  danse  avec  la  demoiselle?"  the  cook's 
deep  voice  went  on  musically. 

"0  je  ne  say  pah." 

"T'es  amuse,  hem?" 

"0  wee,  wee." 

One  deep  melodious  chuckle  now  came  up  through 
the  floor.  That  was  the  cook.  It  now  struck  me  that 
she  was  addressing  him  in  the  idiom  of  the  second 
person  singular ;  also  that  in  his  tone  there  was  some- 
thing— I  couldn't  be  sure  whether  it  was  sheepish,  or 
a  lack  of  ease,  or  merely  impatience,  and  if  he  were 
entirely  conscious  of  it  himself. 

1 1 Quand  on  est  jeune,  f aut  bien  s  'amuser. ' '  (When 
one  is  young  one  must  have  a  good  time.)  As  he  did 
not  reply  to  this,  she  pursued:  "La  sagesse  attendra, 
hein?  Faut  pas  gaspiller  tes  vingt  ans."  (Time 
enough  to  settle  down  later,  eh?  Mustn't  waste  your 
youth  on  that.) 

His  reply  was  to  begin  whistling  a  tune  as  he  moved 
about  the  room.  She  seemed  to  be  stationary,  prob- 
ably by  her  fire ;  for  I  now  heard  some  rattle  of  pans 
or  lids  before  her  next  remark: 

"  Et  la  demoiselle  ?     Elle  t  'a  trouve  gentil  ? ' ' 

"Ah,  comment  es-ker-je  say  slah?"  he  now  broke 
out. 


THE   COOK   AND   THE   DOUGHBOY    229 

Was  there  to  be  no  more  of  this  dialogue?  Alas, 
there  was  not!  His  spurt  of  damaged  temper  and 
equally  damaged  grammar  proved  to  be  his  parting 
remark,  and  I  heard  his  steps  go  out  of  the  kitchen. 
Like  all  international  conversations,  there  was  so 
much  more  in  it  than  the  mere  words !  But  I  doubt 
if  that  particular  cook  and  that  particular  doughboy 
ever  held  talks  together  for  very  long  at  a  time,  and 
I  think  it  likely  that  most  of  their  conferences  termi- 
nated abruptly,  on  his  side  at  any  rate.  She  could  not 
have  ruffled  Kansas  so  easily,  and  Kansas  (if  he  pos- 
sessed fluency  in  French)  would  have  been  able  to 
return  her  fire — but  then  he  was  out  of  the  common. 
There  is  no  play  of  the  intellect  which  the  general 
American  mind  comprehends  less,  and  resents  more, 
than  veiled  irony.  We  are  just  civilized  enough  to 
feel  it  vaguely,  and  not  enough  to  deal  with  it  lightly. 
It  needed  but  little  imagination  to  see  in  my  mind's 
eye  that  cook  and  doughboy,  she  old  and  massive  over 
her  breakfast  pots  and  pans,  he  young  and  defence- 
less beneath  the  lazy  indulgence  of  her  phrases.  No 
conversation  that  I  had  heard  in  France,  nothing  that 
was  told  me,  threw  so  much  light  upon  how  the 
peasants — especially  the  women — must  have  come  in 
time  to  regard  these  vigorous  children  so  fresh  from 
the  Western  world. 

I  went  back  to  my  room,  where  presently  he  came, 
bringing  some  hot  water  and  my  boots.  The  boots, 
after  yesterday  in  the  mud,  had  needed  a  good  deal  of 
his  attention.  He  was  a  shock-headed  boy,  very 
blond,  from  Arkansas.  There  were  two  of  them  who 
looked  after  us,  the  other  being  from  Louisiana. 
This  latter  told  me,  with  a  sort  of  disdain,  that  he 
understood  what  they  said  in  French  pretty  well.    I 


230  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

did  not  need  to  ask  this  question  of  the  boy  from 
Arkansas ;  what  I  had  heard  through  the  floor  sufficed 
to  show  him  already  apt  in  the  language  beyond  many 
a  college  graduate.  His  appearance  suggested  that 
his  fluency  had  been  attained  through  the  tutoring  of 
various  romantic  experiences.  His  body  was  slim, 
he  Avas  light  in  his  walk,  and  almost  certainly  he  knew 
how  to  dance  in  a  manner  that  would  please.  I  was 
tempted  to  ask  him  how  he  liked  the  cook,  but  I 
abstained.  His  way  of  replying  to  questions  dis- 
couraged asking  them. 

He  went  out,  leaving  my  boots  and  hot  water ;  and 
while  I  shaved,  I  heard  in  memory  the  cook's  ironic 
intonations  and  comprehended  everything  that  her 
tawny  voice  had  said  without  words.  She  was  much 
more  than  herself;  she  was  her  race,  her  continuous 
history,  ancient  France,  where  Caesar  had  been,  and 
Roland,  and  Diana  of  Poitiers;  France,  whose  bask- 
ing shores  the  Latin  and  Greek  Mediterranean  ca- 
ressed. In  her  syllables  and  between  them,  laughed 
quietly  the  long-memoried  Mediterranean  which  had 
known  the  Argonauts,  and  Salamis,  and  the  keels  of 
Cleopatra,  and  had  heard  old  Triton  blow  his 
wreathed  horn.  The  spirit  of  the  peasant  cook  con- 
tained all  that,  while  the  boy  contained  not  much 
except  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  She  had 
addressed  him  with  the  intimate  ''thou,"  instead  of 
"you,"  because  her  age  confronted  his  youth  like 
some  antique  sibyl  gazing  from  a  grove  at  a  faun, 
smiling  at  his  physical  charm,  and  bored  with  his 
emptiness.  At  her  birth  she  was  older  than  he  would 
be  at  his  death.  What  the  ancient  Mediterranean, 
speaking  through  her  person,  said  to  him  was  really 
this: 


THE    COOK   AND    THE    DOUGHBOY    231 

"You  are  engaging  and  attractive  because  you  are 
young.  I  like  you,  but  I  like  you  at  a  distance.  You 
have  explored  and  peopled  a  continent,  but  you  have 
not  yet  explored  and  peopled  Time.  Intellect  and 
Art  know  nothing  of  you ;  you  have  not  approached 
near  enough  to  them  to  be  visible.  We  can  see  your 
sky-scrapers,  your  Olympus  not  yet.  Your  material 
science  creates  in  you  the  illusion  that  there  is  a 
short  cut  to  education,  to  reflection,  to  maturity. 
There  are  no  short  cuts  to  anything  except  perdition. 
You  think  that  to  build  many  churches  is  to  have 
much  religion.  You  hold  meetings,  even  your  women 
hold  meetings,  I  am  told,  where  resolutions  are 
passed  and  laws  are  made,  and  by  these  paper  toya 
you  imagine  that  you  have  caused  reality.  Such 
things  do  not  cause  reality,  they  merely  express  it. 

"Never  suppose  that  I  am  not  dazzled  by  the  flame 
of  promise  which  burns  in  you  with  such  energy. 
See  to  it  that  it  be  not  put  out  by  the  poison  which 
our  fatigued  old  world  pours  into  your  still  clean  and 
lusty  veins.  I  hope,  and  sometimes  believe,  that  a 
great  past  will  be  yours  in  time  to  come,  because  I 
have  seen  and  can  never  forget  what  you  have  done 
for  me,  and  the  reason  that  made  you  do  it.  You  are 
fierce  in  battle;  I  love  that.  You  are  good  to  chil- 
dren; that,  too,  I  love.  Grateful  I  am,  but  am  no 
mistress  for  the  lover  who  has  but  one  thing  to  say, 
no  companion  for  one  whose  future  is  his  chief 
tradition. 

' '  Go  home  to  your  new  world,  handsome  and  vigor- 
ous young  barbarian!  You  still  imagine  that  there 
are  answers  to  everything,  that  you  have  found  most 
of  them,  and  are  going  to  find  all.  Remain  in  your 
intellectually  virgin  world  until  your  mental  and 


232  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

moral  adventures  shall  have  brought  you  into  that 
place  which  lies  beyond  discouragement,  and  when  in 
your  ripeness  you  can  smile  at  all  things,  even  at 
yourself,  without  being  paralyzed.  Remain  there 
until  you  have  learned  that  there  is  no  answer  to  any 
of  the  great  questions  for  ever  asked  by  man ;  that  the 
game  is  not  worth  the  candle,  but  that  we  play  it  to  be 
worth  a  candle  ourselves — and  that  to  be  able  to  make 
interesting  love,  one  must  be  complicated. 

"I  see  and  praise  your  restless  intelligence,  upon 
which  Time  has  not  yet  chiselled  a  single  line  of 
grace.  I  enjoy  your  gaiety,  which  proceeds  from  a 
soul  beneath  whose  surface  Adversity  has  not  yet 
begun  to  dig  the  first  approach  to  depth.  But  alas,  I 
can  not  long  be  sympathetic  in  the  company  of  one 
who,  no  matter  how  capable,  is  still  psychologically 
illiterate  and  spiritually  inexperienced:  such  is  the 
price  which  you  pay  for  your  youth,  and  be  assured 
that  youth  is  worth  this  price,  and  more.  Be  less  sure 
that  the  quick  and  great  success  which  you  have  had, 
is  a  blessing.  Ease  may  tarnish  the  beginning  of  our 
days ;  it  polishes  their  end. 

"You  are  still  merely  a  work  of  nature.  A  civil- 
ized man  is  a  work  of  nature  too,  but  he  is  also  a 
highly  wrought  work  of  art.  Come  back  in  a  thou- 
sand years  and  let  me  see  you,  and  then,  0  strong  and 
handsome  boy,  perhaps  you  will  be  ready  for  me." 

Thus,  in  the  voice  of  the  cook,  spoke  the  old  Medi- 
terranean, the  mellow,  subtle,  cynical,  sensual  sibyl. 
The  cook  herself  heard  none  of  these  words,  because 
they  didn't  sound  in  her  brain,  but  echoed  in  her 
unconscious  blood,  and  she  knew  little  more  about 
them  than  any  telephone  knows. 

What  if  young  blond  Arkansas  had  been  able  to 


THE   COOK   AND   THE   DOUGHBOY    233 

hear  them,  instead  of  only  vaguely  and  angrily  to  feel 
them?  Instead  of  ineffectively  flying  out  at  her  with 
his  "Ah,  que  sais-je,"  what  adequate  reply  would  he 
have  found? 

By  the  time  that  I  had  read  the  inner  meaning  of 
their  colloquy,  my  shaving  and  toilet  were  finished, 
and  I  went  down  to  breakfast. 


XXI 


LAST  LAP  TO  ARMISTICE 


Winding  in  many  curves  upon  the  map  which  I 
carried  at  our  journey's  end  as  I  had  carried  it  since 
the  beginning,  the  crosses  plot  our  road  through  the 
Meuse-Argonne  country.  Each  cross  is  set  against 
the  name  of  some  town  or  village,  where  another 
broken  church  tower  reared  like  a  bony,  up-stretched 
arm ;  or  walls  of  broken  homes  stood  waist-high  and 
knee-high  amid  gaping  cellars ;  or  where  the  town  had 
been  struck  out  wholly,  dashed  into  utter  invisibility, 
and  you  could  not  have  known  it  from  the  ground, 
save  for  the  sign-post  bearing  its  name  and  sticking 
in  its  dust.  Like  this  were  Hautcourt  and  Malan- 
court — just  names  on  a  board — and  Fleury  by  the  for- 
lorn wayside  between  Vaux  and  Douaumont.  Others 
there  were ;  but  of  these  slain  towns,  of  whose  very 
bones  not  one  remained,  I  shall  name  no  more.  He 
who  did  not  see,  and  never  now  can  see,  France  flayed 
and  raw  as  she  lay  before  healing  had  set  in,  may 
try  to  conjure  into  his  fancy  the  look  of  it:  stretch 
after  stretch  of  riddled  earth,  horizon  after  horizon 
ragged  with  stark  trees,  emptiness  strewn  with  dis- 
tortion, walls,  towers,  standing  like  limbs  whose 
bodies  have  been  hacked  away,  and  short  sign-posts 
like  headstones  over  the  graves  of  places  dead  and 
buried.  He  who  did  not  see  this  may  try  to  imagine 
it — and  will  fail ;  he  who  has  seen  it  may  try  to  forget 
it — and  will  fail:  somewhere  in  him  that  sight  and 
that  silence  will  live  as  long  as  he  lives  himself. 

234 


LAST   LAP   TO   AEMISTICE  235 

Of  this  particular  piece  of  the  war  country  General 
Pershing  writes : 

"The  Meuse-Argonne  front  had  been  practically 
stabilized  in  September  1914,  and,  except  for  minor 
fluctuations  during  the  German  attacks  on  Verdun  in 
1916  and  the  French  counter  offensive  in  August 
1917,  remained  unchanged  until  the  American  ad- 
vance in  1918.  The  net  result  of  the  four  years' 
struggle  on  this  ground  was  a  German  defensive  sys- 
tem of  unusual  depth  and  strength  and  a  wide  zone  of 
utter  devastation,  itself  a  serious  obstacle  to  offensive 
operations." 

Yes;  a  wide  zone  of  utter  devastation.  Wrecks, 
half  or  whole,  are  the  towns  in  it,  almost  all ;  nearly 
every  name  on  the  map  of  that  three-cornered  coun- 
try is  a  label  of  obliteration.  Go  northwest  down 
the  Meuse  from  Verdun  to  Sedan,  come  south  from 
Sedan,  skirting  the  Argonne  to  Clermont,  turn  east 
back  to  Verdun,  and  you  will  have  enclosed  a  region 
wherein  many  places  had  in  them  shelter  for  not  a 
living  soul  in  1919,  and  two  years  later,  when  next  I 
saw  them,  it  was  still  the  same  with  many.  Grain 
was  green  and  swaying  under  the  wind  where  holes 
and  shells  had  been,  much  of  the  earth  was  breath- 
ing again;  but  from  the  dust  of  Fleury,  Hautcourt, 
Malancourt,  and  many  another,  nothing  had  as  yet 
arisen. 

A  wide  zone  of  utter  devastation :  with  more  to  its 
east  through  the  Woevre  to  the  Moselle,  and  more  to 
its  west  across  Champagne,  and  then  more. 

It  is  a  large  looking  country  of  many  distances. 
Across  it  the  eye  often  sees  far.  At  all  its  edges  and 
also  within  it,  hills  rise.  Numerous  ridges  roughen 
and  streak  it,  valleys  furrow  it,  patches  of  woodland 


236  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

darken  its  open  stretches;  yet  its  spaciousness  of 
line  is  the  chief  aspect  that  sweeps  over  the  memory, 
with  mounded  blurs  a  long  way  off.  In  it,  as  in  the 
Somme  region,  our  Western  bad  lands  were  sug- 
gested once  or  twice  by  the  huge,  bald,  discolored 
slants  of  excoriation.  Nevertheless  it  resembled  but 
little  any  other  of  the  battle  lands  that  I  had  seen. 
Many  wars  had  made  it  their  arena,  but  this  was 
true  of  the  other  regions  also,  and  with  them  it  had 
in  common  that  look  of  a  place  where  something  has 
happened,  of  a  witness  to  deeds  that  will  never  be 
absent  from  the  eyes  again.  But  as  I  watched  it 
from  many  changing  points  beneath  the  sunshine 
of  these  final  days,  I  knew,  without  being  told,  that 
its  serene  amplitude  in  other  days  of  sunshine  had 
been  of  a  sober  rather  than  a  gay  serenity.  There 
are  faces  which  show  the  mark  of  much  agreeable 
society,  of  many  acquaintances,  of  talk  and  laughter ; 
while  others  reveal  that  meditation  has  been  their 
chief  adventure.  The  Meuse-Argonne  country  has 
communed  a  great  deal  with  itself.  To  the  under- 
standing imagination  it  seems  to  say:  " Fourteen 
hundred  years  ago  I  saw  Attila.  He,  too,  like  these 
later  ones,  left  me  for  dead.  These  are  worse  than 
Attila,  because  they  knew  better." 

Fourteen  hundred  years  after  Attila,  the  Meuse- 
Argonne  saw  his  successors.  They  came,  turning 
into  deeds  the  words  of  their  high  priest,  "the  sight 
of  suffering  does  one  good ;  the  infliction  of  suffering 
does  one  more  good,"  and  those  other  words  of  their 
high  priest,  "when  one  country  conquers  another 
nothing  should  be  left  to  it  but  eyes  to  weep."  The 
best  of  them  came  here,  well  taught  and  faithful 
followers  of  their  Bismarck.    Over  them  was  their 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  237 

General  von  Mudra,  with  their  Crown  Prince  over 
him — but  prudently  tied  to  the  apron-strings  of  Mar- 
shal von  Haeseler.  These  tutors  were  to  place  upon 
the  royal  young  brow  the  laurels  of  their  conquests, 
which  would  then  furnish  the  theme  of  happy  tele- 
grams from  hig  father  to  his  mother — those  des- 
patches that  used  to  run,  "Willy  and  God  have  done 
nobly  today."  Thus  the  Fatherland  could  hail  and 
love  the  youth.  He  must  have  also  caused  many 
German  eyes  to  weep,  for  he  was  perfectly  generous 
in  throwing  away  other  people's  lives.  Many  thou- 
sand German  bones  lie  in  the  territory  of  his  failures : 
at  St.  Hubert  and  around  Four-de-Paris,  which  he 
tried  to  take,  from  October  to  January  of  that  first 
year;  at  Fontaine-aux-Charmes  and  Bolante  Wood, 
where  he  was  next  active ;  and  at  Les  Islettes  in  June, 
which  he  missed  in  his  effort  to  get  the  railway  from 
Ste.  Menehould  to  Verdun.  He  scattered  German 
bones  prodigally  at  all  these  places,  and  at  many 
others — no  need  to  recite  his  failure  at  Verdun  in 
1916:  sitting  at  Montfaucon  safely  encased,  he 
watched  operations  through  thirty  feet  of  periscope. 
This  pipe  reached  him  where  he  hid  underground 
and  directed  the  bone-scattering  right  and  left  of 
the  Meuse,  all  the  way  to  Vaux  and  Douaumont  and 
Dead  Man's  Hill  and  the  other  places  of  which  we 
all  heard  so  much  during  those  six  months  of  French 
agony  and  glory. 

Even  though  long  lulls  intervened  in  the  bone- 
scattering  from  1914  to  1918,  the  Meuse-Argonne 
had  little  respite  for  communing  with  itself.  The 
tough  ridge  of  the  forest  was  eaten  beneath  with 
galleries  and  mines,  its  beech  and  oak  thickets  on 
top  were  gashed  with  paths,  strung  with  wires,  sawed 


238  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

short  by  shells;  while  out  of  the  woods  to  its  east 
the  open  country,  from  the  little  Aire  at  its  base  to 
the  larger  Meuse  over  the  hills,  was  bled  white  and 
left  no  eyes  to  weep  with.  I  have  seen  them — the 
empty  hollow  on  the  hill  where  Vauquois  stood,  and 
Charny,  Samogneux,  Consenvoye,  Dun-sur-Meuse, 
Chattancourt,  Avocourt,  Varennes,  Cunel,  Romagne, 
Buzancy — villages  crushed,  lying  among  crushed 
woods  and  pastures  crushed, — a  wide  zone  of  utter 
devastation  indeed. 

Hither  on  September  25th,  1918,  came  our  divi- 
sions to  fight  their  hardest  fight  of  all — made  harder 
and  delayed  by  a  bad  choking  of  their  supplies  along 
the  few  difficult  roads :  a  task  allotted  them  because 
it  was  so  difficult,  the  tough  hog-back  of  the  Argonne 
so  mired  and  enmeshed  with  defences,  and  they  the 
only  men  not  tired  by  four  years  of  strain  and  strug- 
gle. Where  they  had  bled  and  died  and  won  so 
splendidly  not  yet  six  months  ago,  we  followed  their 
course  as  they  had  gone  pushing  north  and  east. 
We  went  over  much  of  the  very  ground  of  their  ex- 
ploits, in  sight  of  more,  and  never  far  from  any  of 
it.  The  mud  was  still  in  many  places  strewn  with 
the  broken  machines  of  war.  In  it  these  lay  flat,  or 
tilted,  or  stuck  half  sunk,  rusting  slowly  as  the  wet 
weather  leaked  among  their  stiff  joints.  We  saw 
where  their  victorious  line  had  been  when  the  Armis- 
tice stopped  their  onward  rush  for  Germany,  and 
they  had  flung  down  their  baffled  guns,  and  cried 
tears  of  disappointed  rage,  all  the  more  bitter  over 
the  knowledge  that  the  Germans  had  been  permitted 
to  get  up  from  their  supplicating  knees,  and  march 
home  with  their  arms  and  banners  like  an  undefeated 
army.    There  is  a  legend  that  the  great  Foch  him- 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  239 

self  shed  tears  on  that  day  of  fateful  error.  We 
skirted  the  territory  of  their  quick  advance  during 
the  first  days  of  the  battle.  Then  in  the  dismem- 
bered woods  through  which  all  sorts  of  fragments 
lay  strewn,  and  the  wires  sagged  tangled  among  the 
broken  branches,  we  stepped  where  the  mud  allowed 
us  in  order  to  see  more  sacred  ground.  It  was  where, 
in  the  long  slow  time  of  hunger,  horror,  thirst,  and 
impregnable  determination,  American  grit  had  been 
tried  out  to  the  full  and  proved  more  than  equal  to 
the  test. 

We  had  gone  up  the  hill  from  Varennes  and  turned 
in  among  the  thickets ;  and  as  we  passed  safe  through 
all  this  extinct,  monstrous  turmoil  of  war  that  lay 
everywhere  over  the  land  like  a  contorted  fossil, 
once  again — it  might  well  have  been  for  the  hun- 
dredth time — I  asked  myself,  "What  was  this  like 
when  it  was  alive  1 ' '  We  must  not  forget !  We  can 
forget  injuries  to  ourselves,  but  not  a  wound  half- 
mortal  to  mankind,  not,  at  any  rate,  until  the  offender 
show  by  sustained  deeds  that  his  spirit  is  changed. 
Long  ago,  in  1915,  I  had  said  that  a  full  comprehen- 
sion of  this  war  would  burst  any  human  brain;  I 
thought  it  again  now,  and  that  from  the  thousand 
chronicles  of  personal  experience  which  will  be  writ- 
ten, the  future  will  distil,  not  the  total  reality,  never 
that,  but  the  final  impression :  and  that  will  rise  and 
loom  above  the  general  level  of  history,  a  terrible 
spectral  shape. 

To  stop  us  in  the  Argonne  the  Germans  brought 
more  and  more  of  their  best  divisions,  piled  them 
in  our  way — and  could  not  stop  us.  They  piled  them 
here  because  this  ground  was  now  their  foot-hold 
for  the  whole:  knock  it  from  under  them,  and  they 


240  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

must  fall  their  full  length,  from  the  sea  south  all 
the  way.  "We  knocked  it  from  under  them.  To  keep 
us  from  their  railway  thoroughfare  between  Metz 
and  Mezieres,  along  which,  as  one  might  say,  their 
life-blood  was  pumped  to  the  whole  body,  they  threw 
against  us  fifteen  reserve  divisions,  while  two  of 
our  own  had  to  be  taken  from  us  and  sent  to  help  in 
Flanders:  nevertheless  we  could  not  be  kept  from 
the  railway.  When  the  wooded  ridge  of  Barricourt 
was  gripped  and  held  by  our  divisions — Wood's  Own 
and  Alamo — on  November  the  first,  Foch,  on  hearing 
the  news,  exclaimed,  "the  war  is  over!" — for  that 
ridge  commanded  the  Meuse  and  more  than  threat- 
ened the  life-blood  thoroughfare  beyond  the  Meuse. 
Not  ignorantly,  nor  yet  with  an  open  guide-book 
merely,  but  with  at  least  some  seasoned  knowledge 
should  one  go  over  this  ground :  Barricourt,  Buzancy, 
Beaumont,  Letanne,  Mouzon,  Raucourt,  and  beyond 
to  the  line  where  the  Armistice  halted  us.  All  of  it 
is  territory  where  our  soldiers — colonels,  captains, 
lieutenants,  sergeants,  privates — by  deeds  of  single 
daring  won  honors  that  are  recorded,  and  deserved 
many  more  that  never  will  be  known.  As  day  fol- 
lowed day  their  dash  increased.  They  had  pierced 
almost  at  once  beyond  the  line  planned  for  the  war 
to  stop  at  and  wait  until  1919  should  see  its  finish. 
They  changed  the  date  of  that  finish  to  1918.  Six 
divisions  of  them  were  ready  to  go  eastward  through 
Briey  into  Germany,  on  November  14th,  with  twenty 
French  divisions  under  General  Mangin.  Four  were 
already  starting  their  march  on  November  11th. 
General  Foch  had  at  his  disposal  two  hundred  and 
five  divisions  in  all,  the  Germans  but  one  hundred 
and  eighty-seven,  of  which  the  seventeen  in  reserve 


LAST   LAP    TO   ARMISTICE  241 

jgsu^r  v  ■-■•-* 

could  not  have  reached  the  Lorraine  front  in  time  to 
stop  us,  because  we  had  cut  their  railway.  The  Ger- 
mans were  already  evacuating  Metz  and  Thionville, 
knowing  themselves  impotent  to  stop  us.  Their 
whole  army  was  helpless  from  Holland  to  the  Saar, 
incapable  to  move  its  vast  demoralized  mass.  Catas- 
trophe was  imminent,  inevitable;  retreat  was  im- 
possible. Even  after  the  Armistice,  the  German 
command  left  all  its  material  on  the  spot,  gave  it  up, 
and  crossed  Dutch  Limbourg.  Organized  to  crush 
down  a  robust  opposition  on  the  Lorraine  front,  the 
Allied  offensive  would  have  there  met  with  but  feeble 
opposition  at  the  first  line  of  defence,  and  would 
have  gone  on  almost  without  loss.  At  a  blow  the 
whole  German  front  from  Switzerland  to  Holland 
would  have  crumpled  together.  It  would  have  been 
done  within  ten  days.  So  the  Germans  in  terror  fell 
on  their  knees,  the  Armistice  was  signed  three  days 
before  the  Lorraine  attack  was  to  begin,  the  German 
Army  escaped  disaster,  marched  home  with  its  arms 
and  banners — and  our  doughboys  who  had  come  three 
thousand  miles  to  do  a  clean  final  job,  dashed  their 
arms  down  and  cried  bitter  tears. 

And  who  were  our  soldiers  that  fought  this  Ar- 
gonne  fight?  What  sort  of  men  were  they  who  took 
Montfaucon  Hill  by  noon  of  the  second  day,  making 
eleven  kilometres  through  the  entangling  defences 
by  that  evening,  and,  by  the  next,  so  alarming  the 
enemy  that  he  threw  six  new  divisions  into  first  line  f 
Such  was  the  start  these  Americans  made  in  the 
Argonne,  delivering  a  direct  frontal  attack  through 
barbed  wire,  machine  guns,  cross  fire,  bad  country, 
deep  mud,  thick  fog:  seven  days  of  this  forward 
striding,  and  then  that  long  slow  second  chapter 


242  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

which  filled  nearly  the  whole  month  of  October — from 
the  fourth  day  until  the  last.  The  final  chapter  like 
the  first  was  short  —  eleven  days  —  with  a  return 
to  the  stride  forward,  the  enemy's  last  defences 
smashed,  the  stride  quickening  to  a  pursuit.  "We 
may  think,  then,  of  the  Meuse-Argonne  battle  as 
thus  divided :  a  swift  beginning,  a  swift  end,  with  a 
middle  twenty-seven  days  long— days  of  holding  on, 
of  crawling  on,  of  torment  and  great  loss,  a  test  of 
every  quality  and  resource  which  combine  to  make 
successful  aggressive  warfare:  and  when  the  test 
was  over,  the  survivors  ready  for  more,  getting  out 
of  their  Argonne  woods,  getting  up  on  their  Barri- 
court  heights,  knocking  the  enemy  off  the  heights 
of  Dun-sur-Meuse,  driving  him  back  faster  and  faster 
out  of  the  home  into  which  he  had  broken,  and  when 
halted  in  full  stride,  weeping  with  rage  at  being 
thwarted  in  catching  him  in  his  own  home,  for  which 
he  was  making  with  such  haste. 

Who  was  this  doughboy  that  did  this  ?  Who  were 
they  that  helped  him? 

The  front  he  held  was  seventy-five  miles  wide. 
More  than  a  million  of  him  held  it.  Behind  him  from 
where  he  fought,  all  the  way  across  France  to  the 
shore  where  he  had  landed,  all  his  machinery  was 
working  to  feed  and  arm  him  and  care  for  his  wounds. 
It  was  not  perfect — how  could  it  be?  But  daily  it 
was  growing  towards  perfection.  Though  still  so 
new  at  the  vast,  terrible  game — three  years  (and  in 
most  cases  nearly  four  years)  newer  than  his  allies 
— once  fairly  in  the  game,  he  caught  up  to  them  with 
a  speed  that  astonished  them,  and  which  they  remem- 
ber with  the  warmest  admiration. 

To  General  Mangin  I  said  on  a  later  day,  purposely 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  243 

steering  clear  of  any  phrase  which  might  hint  of 
brag: 

1  'And  I  hope  you  found  that  our  soldiers  did  fairly 
well?" 

The  tone  in  which  he  answered  was  like  a  rebuke. 
"Fairly  well!,,  he  exclaimed,  "but  very  well!  very, 
very  well." 

He  spoke  without  reserve  and  all  the  more  cor- 
dially, perhaps,  because  during  the  talk  which  had 
preceded  this  question  of  mine  he  had  found  me  not 
unaware  that  we  owed  our  Allies  quite  as  much  as 
they  owed  to  us ;  that  the  moral  tonic  of  our  coming 
in  had  been  weakened  by  our  delay  in  coming  over; 
that  twelve  long  months  after  we  had  come  in,  only 
300,000  of  us  had  got  over ;  that  nothing  but  the  ter- 
rifying imminence  of  disaster,  in  March  1918,  had 
started  the  getting  us  over  in  adequate  numbers,  and 
with  proper  speed ;  that,  but  for  the  help  of  British 
transports,  more  than  half  of  us  could  not  have  got 
over  even  then ;  that  nothing  but  the  superb  sticking 
to  it  of  British  and  French  armies  during  1917-18, 
and  General  Nivelle's  attack  in  1917,  without  waiting 
for  our  coming,  had  held  the  Germans  off,  and  thus 
given  us  the  time  in  which  to  get  ready;  and  that 
during  this  time  our  private  citizens  by  the  thou- 
sand, Americans  on  whose  shoulders  rested  great 
private  responsibilities,  had  dropped  their  work  re- 
gardless of  their  politics,  and  dedicated  their  unre- 
warded ability  to  propping  up  the  most  incompetent 
and  most  ungrateful  administration  which  we  have 
thus  far  staggered  along  under.  The  French  had 
helped  us  out  with  nearly  three  thousand  airplanes 
— we  had  nothing  of  this  kind  ready.  As  to  guns, 
even  by  Armistice  day  we  had  on  our  front  no  75 's, 


244  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

155  mm.  howitzers,  or  155  G.  P.  F.  guns — the  French 
equipped  us  from  their  own  plants  with  this  artil- 
lery for  thirty  divisions.  During  the  Meuse-Argonne 
battle  our  remount  resources  fell  so  short  that  Mar- 
shal Foch  turned  over  to  us  13,000  animals  from 
the  French  armies.  Our  men  had  been  dragging  the 
guns  through  the  mud  themselves,  leaving  behind 
their  rolling  kitchens  in  order  to  do  it,  and  eating 
roots.  One  division  had  been  obliged  to  do  so  much 
walking  in  other  regions  that  it  named  itself  the 
Sight-Seeing  Division. 

A  word  about  our  deficiencies,  the  lightest  acknowl- 
edgment that  we  did  not  win  the  war  alone,  that 
General  Gouraud,  for  example,  with  the  4th  French 
Army  was  fighting  west  of  the  Argonne  while  Gen- 
eral Liggett  with  our  first  army  was  fighting  in  it 
and  east  of  it,  and  that  together  we  broke  the  evil 
spell  and  at  the  finish  were,  so  to  speak,  flying  to 
victory — any  syllable  of  such  recognition  brought 
instantly  its  generous  response  from  any  Frenchman 
just  as  well  as  from  General  Mangin.  What  they 
liked,  what  opened  their  hearts,  was  a  word,  or  even 
a  sign,  which  expressed  appreciation  of  their  cour- 
age and  suffering  during  the  three  years  before  we 
brought  any  courage  or  suffering  into  it;  receiving 
such  word  or  sign,  they  would  say  readily  enough 
that  we  had  saved  them  in  1918.  What  they  did  not 
like,  what  shut  their  hearts,  was  to  hear  us  boast. 
It  is  difficult  to  pay  compliments  to  a  man  who  has 
already  begun  to  pay  them  to  himself. 

But  who  were  these  American  doughboys  for  whom 
General  Mangin  had  such  handsome  compliments? 

Four  French  and  twenty-one  American  divisions 
fought  the  Meuse-Argonne  fight,  and  of  our  divisions 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  245 

five  were  regulars.  All  the  rest  came  from  civil  life, 
like  the  embattled  farmer  who  in  1775  at  Concord 
and  Lexington  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world. 
Every  trade,  profession,  walk  in  life  from  all  over 
the  country  united  to  make  that  roar  which  spoke 
to  the  enemy  of  American  courage  in  the  Meuse- 
Argonne. 

And  who  were  the  enemy?  Germany's  best  troops, 
prepared  from  the  cradle  for  this  day,  their  minds 
put  in  uniform  at  the  kindergarten.  So  fierce  be- 
came the  American  onset  that  when  a  German  divi- 
sion had  once  got  into  it,  it  had  to  stay  in,  it  could 
not  be  relieved.  Twenty  divisions  were  taken  from 
the  French  and  one  from  the  British  front  to  pile  in 
the  way  of  the  Americans.  Forty-seven  days  of  this, 
forty-seven  days  of  the  worst  battle  Americans  have 
known  from  Lexington  and  Concord  to  the  Armistice, 
and  it  was  over.  Not  as  at  the  second  battle  of  the 
Marne,  or  at  St.  Mihiel,  where  we  attacked  on  two 
sides  of  a  pocket  and  squeezed  the  enemy  out  of  it, 
but  in  a  remorseless  frontal  attack,  did  our  divisions 
fight  through  the  Meuse-Argonne,  managing  entirely 
by  ourselves  for  the  first  time  the  whole  mechanism 
and  apparatus  of  it — communications,  dumps,  tele- 
graph lines,  and  water  service.  "We  lost  some  117,000 
in  killed  and  wounded,  captured  26,000  prisoners, 
847  cannon,  3,000  machine  guns,  and  large  quantities 
of  material.  Except  by  the  five  divisions  of  regulars, 
it  was  not  done,  it  could  not  be  done,  with  the  tech- 
nical experience  of  regulars.  Life  was  wasted: — 
seeing  the  waste  at  times  the  French  exclaimed, 
"they're  crazy":  and  perhaps  General  Pershing's 
words  about  it  belong  here: 

The  less  experienced  divisions,  while  aggressive, 


a  i 


246  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

were  lacking  in  the  ready  skill  of  habit.  They  were 
capable  of  powerful  blows,  but  their  blows  were  apt 
to  be  awkward — team  work  was  not  often  well  under- 
stood. Flexible  and  resourceful  divisions  cannot  be 
created  by  a  few  manoeuvres  or  by  a  few  months' 
association  of  their  elements.  On  the  other  hand, 
without  the  keen  intelligence,  the  endurance,  the  will- 
ingness, and  enthusiasm  displayed  in  the  training 
area,  as  well  as  on  the  battle  field,  the  successful 
results  we  obtained  so  quickly  would  have  been  ut- 
terly impossible." 

Let  this  page  therefore  chronicle  the  names  of 
those  sixteen  divisions  who  by  a  few  manoeuvres  and 
a  few  months'  association  in  the  training  area  were 
able  with  our  five  divisions  of  regulars  to  obtain  so 
quickly  those  successful  results. 

That  splendid  26th  Division,  the  Yankee,  came 
early  to  France,  fought  early,  and  fought  late;  the 
28th  was  the  Keystone,  and  saw  war  from  the  second 
Marne  to  Varennes  and  Apremont  in  the  Argonne 
Forest;  the  Blue  and  Gray,  or  29th,  captured  Hau- 
mont;  the  Terribles,  or  32nd,  knew  the  Vesle  and 
met  the  4th  Prussian  Guards,  and  was  twice  in  the 
Meuse- Argonne — especially  at  Cierges  and  Romagne, 
and  its  name  does  not  disclose  that  it  came  from 
Wisconsin  and  Michigan,  but  only  that  the  French- 
men who  gave  it  this  name  thought  that  it  knew  how 
to  fight;  the  Prairie  came  from  Illinois,  it  was  the 
33rd,  and  fought  with  the  British  in  July,  and  along 
the  Meuse  in  October ;  the  35th,  or  Santa  Fe,  did  not 
come  from  the  ancient  city,  but  from  Missouri  and 
Kansas,  where  the  trail  to  the  ancient  city  began, 
and  after  being  in  the  Vosges  it  came  to  the  fight, 
especially  at  Vauquois  and  Cheppy ;  the  Buckeye,  or 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  247 

37th,  naturally  came  from  Ohio,  and  most  particu- 
larly took  one  side  of  Montfaucon  Hill  while  the  79th 
took  the  other ;  it  was  a  devastating  piece  of  courage ; 
the  true  cause  of  the  42nd  being  called  the  Rainbow 
Division  was  not,  as  has  been  repeated,  any  incident 
in  the  sky,  but  because  men  from  twenty-six  states 
and  the  District  of  Columbia  were  in  it,  and  of  its 
record  it  has  reason  to  be  proud;  it  knew  the  July 
fighting  in  the  chalk-white  country  east  of  Reims, 
and  the  Aisne-Marne,  and  St.  Mihiel,  and  came  in 
for  the  flying  finish  of  the  Meuse-Argonne ;  I  do  not 
know  whether  the  78th  got  its  name  from  the  New 
Jersey  men  in  it  or  not;  men  from  New  York  and 
Delaware  were  there  too,  and  it  was  called  the  Light- 
ning Division ;  it  came  into  the  fight  by  Grand  Pre, 
where  it  relieved  the  heroic  77th  after  the  bitter 
struggle  through  the  Argonne  Wood,  and  had  a  bitter 
struggle  itself  to  take  the  Bois  des  Loges;  the  Lib- 
erty or  79th  Division  came  from  Pennsylvania,  Mary- 
land, and  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  after  its  share 
at  Montfaucon  and  its  extra  rush  to  Nantillois,  went 
east  of  the  Meuse  and  was  headed  for  Lorraine ;  the 
Blue  Ridge  began  the  Argonne  early  at  Bethincourt, 
fought  through  the  whole  of  it,  finishing  after  the 
capture  of  Beaumont  and  Yoncq ;  the  Wildcat  fought 
east  of  the  Meuse,  and  took  Chatillon  and  other 
towns;  and  the  reader  will  expect  to  hear  that  it 
came  from  North  and  South  Carolina  and  Florida, 
but  it  also  came  from  Porto  Rico :  the  All  American, 
or  82nd  Division,  came  from  thirty-seven  states, 
though  it  was  the  National  Guard  of  Georgia,  Ala- 
bama, and  Tennessee;  it  fought  through  October, 
taking  Marcq,  Chehery,  and  other  places;  the  89th, 
at  whose  capture  of  Barricourt  heights  Foch  ex- 


248  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

claimed  "the  war  is  over,"  was  called  Wood's  Own, 
and  I  think  that  Leonard  Wood  must  have  liked  that 
name  as  much  as  did  the  men ;  they  came  from  Kan- 
sas, Missouri,  Colorado,  Nebraska,  North  Dakota, 
New  Mexico,  and  Arizona ;  they  began  to  fight  in  the 
St.  Mihiel,  went  into  the  Meuse-Argonne,  capturing 
other  places  beyond  Barricourt,  and  found  themselves 
beyond  the  Meuse  on  November  11th.  They  derive 
pleasure  also  from  remembering  that  they  were  the 
football  champions  of  our  entire  army.  The  90th, 
the  Alamo,  from  Texas  and  Oklahoma,  came  into 
the  fight  in  October,  and  stayed  till  the  end,  capturing 
ten  places  and  advancing  eighteen  miles  against  re- 
sistance. The  77th,  the  Metropolitan  Division,  had 
a  somewhat  special  chance  to  suffer  and  to  triumph. 
They  happened  to  be  placed  in  the  thick  of  the  Ar- 
gonne  Wood,  on  the  worst  side  of  that  bristling 
hog-back,  their  period  on  the  front  line  during  the 
difficult  advance  which  constitutes  the  second  chap- 
ter of  the  battle  being  longer  than  that  of  any  other 
division.  They  fought  from  the  first  day  until  Oc- 
tober 15th,  and  again  from  October  31st  to  November 
11th,  and  their  losses  were  severe.  One  incident  of 
their  fight  has  become  widely  known;  we  read  of  it 
in  the  newspapers  each  day  while  it  was  happening, 
we  have  read  of  it  since.  Three  whole  years  after 
it  occurred,  we  were  all  reminded  of  it  again  by  an 
event  of  piercing  sadness.  Through  the  romantic 
phrase  of  a  newspaper  correspondent,  a  misrepre- 
sentation was  unintentionally  spread,  and  though  the 
error  has  been  corrected  and  Major  Whittlesey  set 
right,  an  established  mistake  needs  to  be  set  right 
more  than  once.  His  battalion  was  not  a  "Lost  Bat- 
talion," as  it  was  called  in  the  despatches. 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  249 

After  the  77th  Division  had  been  advancing  six 
days,  through  the  bristles  and  across  the  slits  in 
the  hog-back,  a  wickedly  hot  fire  stopped  it,  notwith- 
standing which  it  was  ordered  to  go  on.  Near  a 
place  called  Binarville,  fairly  west  through  the  wood 
from  Varennes,  trickle  some  marshy  tributaries  of 
the  Aisne,  down  the  west  side  of  the  hog-back.  These 
make  swamps  and  come  to  junctions,  over  whose  wet 
ground  rise  high,  steep,  wooded  rocks  in  walls.  Com- 
panies from  the  307th  and  308th  Infantry  with  some 
of  the  306th  Machine  Gun  Battalion,  formed  the  bat- 
talion which  Major  Whittlesey  was  ordered  to  take 
into  one  of  these  junctions  and  hold  the  position. 
He  carried  out  the  order,  working  through  the  meshes 
of  wet  growth,  losing  near  a  hundred  men,  raked  by 
fire,  and  taking  prisoners  nevertheless.  Here  he  was 
to  have  been  supported  on  the  west  by  some  of  Gou- 
raud's  4th  French  Army,  and  on  the  east  by  the 
307th  Infantry.  These  flanking  supports  failed  to 
make  the  planned  parallel  advance  each  side  of  him. 
Being  thus  the  only  one  to  succeed  in  carrying  out 
his  orders,  he  found  himself  cut  off,  surrounded,  with 
food  for  one  day,  and  set  about  making  the  best  he 
could  of  it.  He  got  one  message  back  to  headquarters 
by  a  carrier  pigeon,  the  man  he  sent  for  food  never 
returned.  His  general  had  ordered  Whittlesey  to 
stay,  and  now  did  his  best  to  get  reinforcements  to 
him.  For  three  days  the  battalion  listened  to  Ger- 
man voices,  returned  German  fire,  and  grew  more 
hungry,  more  thirsty,  and  fewer  in  numbers — from 
more  than  six  hundred  to  two  hundred  and  fifty — ■ 
but  they  kept  off  the  Germans,  who  asked  them  now 
and  then  why  they  did  not  surrender.  On  the  fourth 
day,  with  still  no  food,  with  scanty  water,  and  groan- 


250  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

ing  wounded,  and  lessening  ammunition,  they  still 
held  on,  refusing  the  German  invitations  to  surren- 
der. The  last  of  these  invitations  was  not  shouted 
from  the  enemy  line,  it  was  a  note  brought  by  mes- 
senger— a  captured  American  soldier.  Part  of  this 
note  read: 

' '  The  suffering  of  your  wounded  men  can  be  heard 
over  here  in  the  German  lines,  and  we  are  appealing 
to  your  humane  sentiments  to  stop.  A  white  flag 
shown  by  one  of  your  men  will  tell  us  that  you  agree 

with  these  conditions.    Please  treat  Private as 

an  honorable  man.  He  is  quite  a  soldier.  We  envy 
you.,, 

That  was  a  handsome  message,  and  Whittlesey 
made  no  comment  as  he  read  it;  it  is  said  that  he 
smiled.  After  showing  the  note  to  officers  standing 
near  him,  he  put  it  in  his  pocket.  It  was  the  men 
who  shouted  their  defiance  pungently  and  unprint- 
ably  to  the  enemy  when  the  news  of  the  note  and  its 
contents  got  about.  They  preferred  death  to  sur- 
render, and  death  it  would  have  been  that  evening 
for  them  all,  but  they  were  saved  by  the  arrival  of 
the  307th. 

There  is  the  story :  Whittlesey  had  orders  to  take 
and  hold  at  any  cost  a  certain  position.  He  did  it, 
and  through  his  dogged  courage  our  line  was  pushed 
forward  and  stabilized. 

Whittlesey  is  dead.  Three  years  after  those  Ar- 
gonne  days,  he  jumped  from  a  steamship  to  his 
death  at  sea.  We  must  suppose  that  his  nerves  had 
received  a  bruise  incurable.  This  war  with  the  hor- 
rors of  its  new  science  seems  to  have  destroyed  the 
mental  or  physical  health  of  many  who  came  bravely 
through  it  unhurt,  so  far  as  appearances  went  at 


LAST   LAP    TO   ARMISTICE  251 

the  time.  Its  work  on  mind  and  body  resembles  the 
burn  of  radium  on  occasions,  invisible  at  first,  a  deep 
sore  later,  hard  to  heal,  and  sometimes  fatal. 

Bruised  nerves,  the  radium  burns  of  the  war,  can 
be  seen  today  in  many  hospitals  and  asylums.  A 
lady  where  I  live  wished  to  arrange  a  little  music 
for  the  entertainment  of  some  patients,  and  asked 
that  these  sick  soldiers  be  allowed  to  assemble  in  a 
large  hall  where  the  concert  could  be  given. 

"They  cannot  be  allowed  to  go  there,"  said  the 
superintendent.  "They  are  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
men  permanently  raving  mad." 

On  many  acres  in  the  Meuse-Argonne  countless 
great  deeds  were  done  that  never  will  be  known.  The 
hero  that  lives  in  most  men  and  may  sleep  in  them 
through  a  whole  life  of  week-days,  waked  in  this 
fiery  month  of  battle  and  made  of  it  a  sacred  day, 
frightful,  consecrated,  divine  through  sacrifice.  The 
nameless  unrewarded  dead,  the  seven  hundred  and 
fifty  madmen,  are  less  sad  to  think  of  than  certain 
of  those  who  lived  and  came  out  whole,  in  whom 
the  hero  has  fallen  so  fast  asleep  again  that  his  very 
existence  seems  doubtful  now. 

Scarce  three  miles  through  the  wood  from  the 
swamps  and  tangles  of  the  Beset  Battalion,  is  quite 
another  sight.  Prince  Rupprecht  of  Bavaria  lived 
in  the  trees  above  Varennes  most  comfortably.  To 
see  his  thoughtfully  constructed  quarters  was  ample 
compensation  for  not  seeing  the  elaborate  conve- 
niences below  ground  that  the  Germans  had  made 
for  themselves  at  Les  Eparges.  I  have  been  twice 
to  Rupprecht 's  look-out.  It  must  have  housed  more 
enjoyments  and  relaxations  for  his  royal  senses  than 
Montfaucon  supplied  to  the  Crown  Prince.    I  cannot 


252  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

blame  a  prince  for  taking  such  good  care  of  his  pleas- 
ures so  much  as  I  blame  those  unthinking  American 
soldiers  who,  as  soon  as  they  got  out  of  war-stricken 
France  into  unscathed,  whole-skinned  Germany,  be- 
gan to  prefer  Germans,  merely  because  they  found 
it  more  comfortable  on  the  uninvaded  Rhine  than  on 
the  shattered  and  bleeding  margins  of  the  Marne  and 
the  Meuse.  It  is  a  pity  that  these  doughboys  were 
capable  of  so  little  reflection — thought  more  like  chil- 
dren of  eight  than  men  of  twenty-five.  Elaborate 
thought  was  apparent  everywhere  in  the  quarters  of 
the  Bavarian  prince.  One  descended  concrete  steps 
so  solid  and  shapely  that  they  were  like  what  you  see 
in  some  large  handsome  garden  conducting  from  some 
terrace  or  arbor  to  some  lake  with  lilies  and  gold- 
fish; there,  one's  eye  followed  a  substantial  balus- 
trade, again  like  something  in  a  park ;  down  the  first 
flight,  in  the  rooms,  were  wainscotted  walls,  excel- 
lently finished,  apartment  led  to  apartment,  one  im- 
agined where  the  electric  lights  had  shone  on  games 
of  cards,  and  where  music  and  song  had  made  the 
nights  agreeable — all  in  the  middle  of  this  muddy, 
wild,  disordered  wood!  Brick  heaters  were  there 
to  keep  Rupprecht  warm;  one  room  had  a  bay-win- 
dow like  a  city  house;  there  was  ornamentation; 
there  was  a  theatre;  in  a  trench  to  the  left  of  Rup- 
precht's  exit  was  beautiful  concrete  work;  a  fine 
stone  chimney  stuck  up  into  the  wild,  disordered 
woods  from  a  heavy,  sunken  concrete  roof — probably 
a  division  headquarters;  the  place  was  a  veritable 
city,  the  dug-outs  went  down  sixty  feet  and  connected 
right  and  left.  We  did  not  go  into  a  quarter  of  it. — 
And  then  on  the  walls  of  Rupprecht 's  parlor,  "Du- 
buque, la."  scrawled  in  a  clear  hand.    Also,  " Oscar 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  253 

McLeven,"  and  "Robert  B.  Franklin,"  and  "Little 
McCarthy." 

"During  that  battle?"  I  inquired,  astonished  that 
they  should  have  had  time  to  write  their  names — 
or  anything — then. 

"No,"  said  our  escort.  "Done  since  by  visitors." 
He  had  "jumped  off"  at  Cheppy,  just  north  of  Va- 
rennes,  and  knew  that  our  men  had  been  otherwise 
occupied. 

Such  was  the  scene  inside  these  concrete  caves; 
traces — almost  echoes — of  comfort,  pleasure,  luxury; 
and  outside,  at  their  very  doors,  the  wild,  disordered 
wood,  littered  with  leavings  of  war.  Not  yet  were 
the  little  wooden  cleats  along  the  wet  paths  disar- 
ranged, nor  yet  the  fragments  among  the  sodden 
leaves  disturbed,  and  through  the  branches  every- 
where hung  the  telephone  wires.  We  picked  up,  on 
another  day,  two  or  three  pages  from  a  book,  muddy 
but  legible  still,  libidinous  and  intimate,  written  to 
stir  youth  and  to  goad  age.  To  many  an  American 
boy  it  would  have  been  like  the  first  dose  of  frontier 
whisky  to  a  Cheyenne  or  a  Sioux,  only  more  potent 
in  its  appeal  and  more  ravaging  in  its  possible  in- 
fluence. Had  the  volume  belonged  to  Prince  Rup- 
precht's  library?  Had  it  dropped  from  the  kit  of 
some  soldier  of  the  77th?  Or  had  Little  McCarthy 
brought  it?    Well,  we  were  not  likely  ever  to  know. 

Not  on  the  walls  alone  had  the  Little  McCarthys 
begun  to  leave  their  defacing  mark;  names  and  in- 
itials were  already  carved  upon  the  trees.  This  was 
not  the  only  place  where  such  records  were  to  be 
seen;  they  covered  the  walls  thick  over  at  Mont- 
faucon.  Names  were  scribbled  by  the  hundred  in 
that  house  on  the  height  where  the  Crown  Prince 


254  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

through  thirty  feet  of  periscope  had  safely  watched 
other  people  fight  and  die.  These  names  were  not 
going  to  secure  much  immortality,  however,  for  the 
people  who  had  written  them;  already  this  snug 
abode  of  the  Crown  Prince  was  going  the  way  of  all 
flesh  and  plaster  and  mortar  and  everything  else. 
Its  gaunt  shape  reared  up  on  the  hillside,  and  it  was 
ceasing  to  be  a  house  and  beginning  to  be  remains; 
in  a  little  while  it  would  be  like  all  the  rest  of  this 
village.  We  entered  the  gaps  that  had  been  its  front 
door;  explored  its  rotting  premises,  walked  up  its 
as  yet  safe  stairs;  looked  out  of  its  window-holes 
over  the  wide,  mournful  country  towards  Verdun; 
watched  the  swallows  flying  in  and  out  of  these 
holes ;  stared  at  the  disintegrating  walls ;  stared  most 
at  that  observatory  which  had  been  built  through  the 
centre  of  the  house  for  the  Crown  Prince.  That 
was  a  structure  indeed!  It  ran  up  through  the 
building  which  served  as  a  concealment  of  its  iden- 
tity, as  camouflage.  It  was  reinforced  with  steel  and 
sand  bags  and  concrete.  We  admired  this  symbol 
of  the  solid,  thorough  German  character — and  of 
the  precautionary  valor  of  the  House  of  Hohen- 
zollern.  We  mounted  to  the  roof  and  stood  there 
to  look  better  across  the  wide  view,  the  woods  and 
fields  over  which  the  37th  and  79th  Divisions  had 
made  that  devastating  frontal  attack  by  which  they 
took  Montfaucon.  It  had  been  said  that  you  could 
not  take  it.  It  stood  up  there  about  midway  between 
the  Meuse  and  the  Argonne,  strengthened  and  pro- 
tected by  three  years  of  German  military  science — 
but  they  took  it.  Perhaps  it  was  wasteful  tactics, 
certainly  it  was  splendid  courage. 

Still  better  could  we  see  the  ground  over  which 


LAST   LAP    TO   ARMISTICE  255 

they  had  come  from  a  point  on  the  hill,  which  rises 
higher  than  the  look-out  of  the  Crown  Prince.  There 
was  much  in  that  graveyard  to  lead  one  to  stand  still : 
another  torn  acre  of  tombs,  another  church  that  never 
would  be  a  church  again.  It  made  a  high  point  in 
the  silence — one  of  the  places  where  this  enormous 
stillness  came  flowing  in  from  every  quarter  of  the 
horizon,  flowing  and  flooding  over  ridge  and  wood 
and  field,  coming  to  the  base  of  the  hill,  rolling  up 
its  steep  sides,  and  meeting  and  settling  on  top  in 
a  great  wave  upon  which  human  voices  and  the  sound 
of  birds  made  not  the  slightest  mark.  I  remember 
that  all  the  time  we  were  there  a  cuckoo  was  sing- 
ing ceaselessly.  He  was  as  filled  with  spring  as 
was  the  sunshine,  and  the  green  of  the  new  leaves; 
but  he  made  no  difference,  nothing  made  any  differ- 
ence, in  this  sea  of  silence  that  stretched  around  us, 
west  to  the  towers  of  invisible  Reims  rising  above  it, 
and  still  west  to  Amiens ;  and  east  also  beyond  where 
eye  could  look. 

I  had  copied  no  names  in  the  house  of  the  Crown 
Prince,  but  in  this  graveyard  among  the  heaved-up 
slabs  and  ripped  interiors  where  open  coffins  lay,  I 
wrote :  Jn  Fois  Drouet,  Docteur  Medecin,  1795-1849 ; 
Hyte  Hector  Guillenot  d'Alby,  2me  regiment  de  cui- 
rassiers, 1814-1855;  Anne  Brouchet,  Epouse  Drouet 
et  d'Alby,  1820-1880.  These  names  were  on  the 
tablet  of  a  tomb  broken  open,  and  they  belonged  to 
the  corpses  which  had  been  scattered  into  sight.  The 
tomb  was  one  of  several  fine  monuments  and  had 
been  wired  for  the  telephone  and  made  an  observa- 
tion point,  but  this  was  no  excuse  for  the  wanton 
desecration  of  the  dead. 

From  here  we  could  see  the  entire  upland  of  the 


256  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

heights  of  the  Meuse,  as  well  as  the  ridge  of  the 
Argonne  Forest,  and  no  place  was  better  for  relating 
the  parts  of  this  large  country  to  the  whole.  We 
adjusted  to  each  other  the  points  where  we  had  been, 
and  some  of  those  still  to  come.  There  to  the  south 
we  could  make  out  Hill  304,  where  our  80th  and  4th 
Divisions  had  begun  their  part  of  the  Meuse- Argonne 
battle  near  Bethincourt  and  Dannevoux,  pivoting  on 
Verdun  and  swinging  northward.  We  knew  Hill  304, 
for  there  we  had  been  already  in  the  course  of  our 
circuitous  wandering.  We  had  gone  in  and  out  of 
the  folds  of  the  landscape,  and  far  and  wide,  seeing 
various  signs  of  the  war  scattered  broadcast  through 
the  region.  Once,  between  Etain  and  Damloup,  we 
had  passed  a  Baldwin  locomotive,  alive  and  steam- 
ing, recalling  home,  and  symbolizing  reconstruction. 
Tank  traps  had  been  placed  along  that  road.  These 
consisted  of  very  strong  stone  posts  set  in  the  ground 
something  like  gate-posts,  and  between  them  would 
be  strung  heavy  chains.  We  had  passed  squads  and 
squads  of  German  prisoners,  dull  in  their  dingy 
green.  These  were  at  work  upon  the  roads,  and  they 
worked  as  little  as  they  could.  Alike  in  the  knobbed 
and  gnomeish  countenances  of  the  old  and  the  pleas- 
ant ruddy  faces  of  the  young,  I  seemed  to  descry  the 
same  look  of  puzzlement.  Were  they  heavily  won- 
dering all  the  while  how  and  why  they  had  come  to 
be  here,  or  had  they  worked  beyond  this  to  the  later 
stage  of  wondering  how  soon  they  would  be  able  to 
revenge  themselves1?  We  passed  Russians  too — 
strangely  different  from  any  one  else.  Our  escorts 
could  not  tell  us  what  they  were  doing  or  what  their 
status  was ;  and  I  doubt  if  they  knew  this  themselves. 
They  had  saved  France  as  much  in  the  beginning 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  257 

as  we  had  saved  her  in  the  end;  they  had  fought 
bravely,  had  been  vilely  betrayed  at  home,  and 
slaughtered  pitifully  by  the  thousand,  and  now  their 
country — the  one  that  they  had  known — was  welter- 
ing in  disaster,  no  longer  herself.  I  gather  that  they 
had  been  treated  very  stupidly  by  the  French  Govern- 
ment, and  that  their  souls  must  have  been  poisoned 
by  a  sense  of  ingratitude.  Over  all  this  unearthly 
mixture  of  Baldwin  locomotive,  cheerful  doughboys, 
saddened  peasants,  German  prisoners,  Russian  exiles 
at  work  or  at  idleness,  amid  mounds  and  holes  and 
obliterated  roads  and  villages,  shone  a  bright  sun- 
light upon  the  trees.  In  their  branches  the  mistletoe 
bunched  like  crows '  nests ;  while  above  them  in  the 
blue  soared  many  larks  like  floating  dots  of  song. 
Their  music  fell  upon  the  forlorn  fields  in  scattered 
drops  of  sound  which  might  have  been  made  by  silver 
hammers  tapping  upon  a  crystal  vault.  German 
words  were  painted  large  and  black  upon  many  a 
village  corner,  sometimes  naming  a  street,  sometimes 
an  office  or  headquarters ;  and  from  these  still  habit- 
able edifices  we  would  pass  almost  in  a  breath  to 
zones  where  all  had  been  blasted  flat,  and  it  was 
rare  to  see  any  fragment  that  still  resembled  a  house. 
Along  much  of  these  winding  journeys,  camouflage 
of  various  patterns  remained,  whole  or  in  rags ;  and 
this  also  touched  with  unearthliness  a  scene  where 
shell  holes  lay  like  giant  soup  plates,  scummed  with 
motionless  bubbles  and  awful  liquid. 

And  yet  the  fury  which  had  reduced  the  world  to 
this,  produced — otherwise  man  would  have  perished 
as  much  from  horror  of  the  brain  as  from  wounds 
of  the  flesh — songs,  and  jokes  by  the  thousand,  and 
philosophy,  and  in  many  cases  deep,  ultimate,  serene 


258  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

belief  in  God.  A  piece  of  poilu  philosophy  from  the 
trenches  has  been  translated  into  English  and  ap- 
plied to  our  doughboys;  but  by  an  American  brain 
no  such  train  of  logic  would  have  been  formulated, 
although,  once  it  was  formulated,  American  brains 
might  readily  have  assented  to  it : 

With  the  poilu  everything  might  be  worse. 

Of  two  things  one  is  certain — 

Either  you're  mobilized  or  you're  not  mobilized; 

If  you're  not  mobilized,  there's  no  need  to  worry, 

But  if  you're  mobilized,  one  of  two  things  is  certain — 

Either  you're  at  the  front  or  behind  the  lines. 

If  you're  behind  the  lines,  there's  no  need  to  worry, 

But  if  you're  at  the  front,  one  of  two  things  is  certain — 

Either  you're  in  a  safe  place  or  you're  exposed  to  danger. 

If  you're  exposed  to  danger,  one  of  two  things  is  certain — 

Either  you're  wounded  or  you're  not  wounded. 

But  if  you're  wounded,  one  of  two  things  is  certain — 

Either  you  're  wounded  slightly  or  you  're  wounded  seriously. 

If  you're  wounded  seriously,  one  of  two  things  is  certain — 

Either  you  recover  or  you  die. 

If  you  recover,  there's  no  need  to  worry. 

If  you  die  you  can 't  worry,  so  what 's  the  use. 

The  gaiety  of  this,  which  flashes  through  it  like  a 
blade  of  well-tempered  steel,  strangely  ratifies  a  word 
of  foresighted  discernment  spoken  by  Bismarck  in 
1874.  That  was  three  years  after  he  had  defeated 
France  and  taken  Alsace-Lorraine  from  her.  He 
was  passing  with  a  friend  through  some  German 
city — it  may  have  been  Stuttgart — and  in  the  evening 
went  to  hear  La  Fille  de  Madame  Angot,  whose 
words  and  music  were  then  quite  new.  It  came  from 
Paris.  At  first  Bismarck  was  much  diverted,  and 
laughed  and  enjoyed  himself.  Gradually  he  ceased 
to  laugh,  became  graver  and  graver,  until  he  was 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  259 

so  dark  and  silent  that  his  friend  in  surprise  asked 
him  if  he  did  not  like  it. 

''Not  at  all,"  he  said.  "For  here  is  an  enemy 
singing  and  dancing,  and  an  enemy  who  can  sing  and 
dance  like  that  is  not  conquered." 

In  those  days  and  long  after  them,  as  late  as  1914, 
indeed,  the  rest  of  the  world — and  even  France  her- 
self— would  have  heard  in  the  sportive  measures  of 
Madame  Angot  nothing  but  an  irresponsible,  if  agree- 
able, levity ;  but  canny  old  Bismarck  heard  that  phi- 
losophy of  the  poilu.  One  remembers  it  was  in  the 
following  year,  1875,  that,  if  he  had  been  allowed 
by  certain  other  powers,  he  would  have  invaded 
France  again  in  order  to  " bleed  her  white"  so  that 
she  should  stay  so.  Very  obviously  the  gaiety  of 
Madame  Angot  contributed  its  light  straw  to  his 
perfectly  wise  and  perfectly  savage  intention. 

Along  the  valley  of  the  little  Aire  we  followed  very 
intelligibly  the  advance  made  during  the  first  eleven 
days  of  October  by  our  1st  Division.  While  Whittle- 
sey was  across  in  the  wood  west  of  the  river,  perhaps 
six  miles  off,  they  were  working  along  east  of  it, 
capturing  Baulny,  Exermont,  Fleville;  and  there 
was  but  little  along  this  ridge  to  hinder  our  view  of 
the  whole  of  this.  Down  below  ran  the  river  pleas- 
antly, its  valley  green  with  marshes  and  busy  with 
birds  and  looking  like  something  at  home — very  dif- 
ferent from  the  sights  on  the  ridge.  To  tell  a  reader 
about  mud  is  hardly  worth  while,  therefore  I  will  say 
no  more  of  it  than  that  later,  beyond  Grand  Pre,  and 
between  Buzancy  and  Raucourt,  we  grew  venture- 
some in  our  exploration,  and  for  a  while  I  wondered 
if  I  were  not  going  to  be  sorry  that  I  had  come.  But 
we  got  out  of  it  at  last,  and  I  must  certainly  tell  you 


260  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

about  the  bells  of  Autrecourt,  another  of  the  villages 
taken  by  our  1st  Division,  in  their  fight  during  early 
November. 

On  the  river  Meuse,  upon  that  reach  of  it  which 
saw  us  come  after  the  Huns  in  the  final  days,  are 
Mouzon,  Letanne,  Angecourt,  Autrecourt,  with  Beau- 
mont and  Yoncq  not  far  off ;  all  names  full  of  mem- 
ory to  our  divisions  who  pushed  to  the  river  or 
beyond  it  during  the  flight  to  victory  just  before 
the  Armistice.  Mouzon  has  a  most  beautiful  little 
church,  but  its  bells  are  gone.  So  are  the  bells  gone 
from  all  of  the  churches  thereabouts,  save  only  the 
church  at  Autrecourt.  This  has  one,  the  others  fol- 
lowed where  went  their  neighbors  of  Mouzon  and 
all  the  other  places.  Their  bells  were  removed  by 
the  Germans  for  the  sake  of  their  metal.  One  eve- 
ning, just  about  the  time  that  the  order  went  forth 
to  take  away  all  the  French  church  bells  that  they 
might  be  melted  down  in  Germany  for  the  better 
destruction  of  the  French,  some  Hun  officers  were 
enjoying  themselves  in  Autrecourt.  They  were  sup- 
ping freely  and  easily.  So  were  the  few  other  Ger- 
mans who  were  there.  The  village,  like  all  of  the 
Meuse-Argonne  region,  had  been  in  German  pos- 
session since  1914,  and  the  officers  had  made  them- 
selves much  at  home.  That  night  during  the  supper, 
fire  broke  out  in  the  German  military  stores.  As 
this  mishap  was  not  at  all  one  which  concerned  the 
French,  they  became  the  pleased  spectators  of  it. 
Can  you  see  those  French  peasants  and  villagers 
with  their  hands  in  their  pockets,  watching  the  fire 
get  the  better  of  the  German  stores'?  When  it  was 
quite  too  late  to  do  anything  in  the  way  of  preven- 
tion, somebody  came  out  from  supper  and  saw. 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  261 


a 


Mein  Gott!"  he  very  naturally  exclaimed. 

But  this  did  no  good,  nor  did  any  of  the  various 
other  expressions  which  followed  from  him  and  his 
brother  officers,  as  they  came  piling  out. 

"Why  did  you  not  tell  us  of  this?"  they  demanded 
of  the  villagers.  ' '  Why  did  you  allow  it  to  get  beyond 
control?  You  should  immediately  have  sounded  the 
tocsin." 

But  to  this  the  villagers  had  no  answer  except  to 
smile  agreeably  while  they  shrugged  their  shoulders. 

So  it  all  burned  to  ashes  and  more  had  to  be  sent 
from  Germany. 

"Very  well,"  said  the  officers,  "for  your  pig-dog 
disrespect  for  the  property  of  the  All  Highest,  you 
shall  receive  punishment.  During  three  months,  be- 
ginning tomorrow,  every  day  two  citizens  shall  ring 
the  tocsin  for  fifteen  minutes." 

This  sentence  was  forthwith  put  into  effect,  and 
while  it  was  in  mid-execution  came  the  people  to 
carry  out  the  order  from  Germany  and  remove  all 
church  bells.  But  if  you  have  no  bell  you  can  sound 
no  tocsin.  Therefore  from  the  church  at  Autrecourt 
only  two  bells  were  taken  in  order  that  two  citizens 
should  be  able  to  carry  out  the  punishment  by  ring- 
ing the  third  bell  for  fifteen  minutes  every  day  till 
the  three  months  had  expired. 

Today,  therefore,  while  all  neighboring  church 
towers  are  empty  of  their  chimes,  you  can  hear  one 
bell  at  Autrecourt  calling  the  peasants  and  villagers 
to  their  prayers. 

It  was  at  Mouzon,  next  door  to  Autrecourt,  a  mile 
or  so  up  the  Meuse,  that  the  village  apothecary  told 
me  this,  after  he  had  accompanied  me  in  a  vain 
search  for  the  grave  of  an  American  boy,  and  we 


262  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

were  inside  the  exquisite  church.  Throughout  all  of 
this  woe-begone  country  it  was  merriment  bubbling 
from  the  eternal  masculine  heart  that  helped  that 
tough  heart  to  beat  on  sanely  till  the  tempest  was 
over ;  and  when  we  wander  among  the  crosses  where 
lie  the  dead  men  whose  hearts  were  stilled  during 
the  storm,  we  shall  not  imagine  it  rightly  if  we 
imagine  it  as  going  on  without  laughter.  There  is 
no  laughter  for  us  among  the  crosses:  but  of  them 
that  were  in  it,  few  who  survive,  I  think,  could  have 
come  through  and  remained  at  all  themselves,  had 
they  not  been  capable  of  mirth.  Therefore  when  I 
think  of  the  men  who  fought  and  suffered  so  well — 
French,  British,  Americans — I  know  that  most  of 
them  joked  well  too — know  that  nearly  every  day  they 
must  have  exchanged  words  such  as  these  between 
two  American  doughboys  talking  about  a  third,  and 
overheard  by  an  officer : 

"He's  got  just  about  no  sense  at  all." 
"No.    If  his  brains  were  gunpowder  and  went  off 
they  wouldn't  blow  his  nose.,, 

The  "buck  privates"  whom  we  saw  in  the  streets 
of  Sedan  looked  as  if  almost  any  of  them  could  talk 
like  that  in  almost  any  circumstances.  Sedan  they 
had  not  entered  at  the  end  of  their  rush  during  those 
early  November  days  of  1918 ;  this  particular  act  had 
been  most  fittingly  done  by  the  French ;  it  was  right 
to  heal,  so  far  as  ever  it  could  be  healed,  the  wound 
and  the  outrage  dealt  there  by  Bismarck  to  France 
in  1870.  Do  you  remember  the  outrage?  There  it 
was  that  the  Emperor  Louis  Napoleon  surrendered, 
and  a  great  disaster  fell  upon  the  French  army  and 
nation;  and  while  that  surrender  was  taking  place, 
Prussian  trumpets  blew  the  strains  of  the  Marseil- 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  263 

laise  into  the  ears  of  their  vanquished  foes.  Oh, 
my  friend,  when  you  hear  talk  about  the  "irritating" 
attitude  of  France  since  the  war,  put  yourself,  whose 
country  has  never  suffered  anything  like  this,  in  a 
Frenchman's  place;  and  remember  the  indemnities 
which  Germany  purposed  to  exact  from  France, 
England,  and  ourselves,  if  she  had  won! 

Just  across  the  bridge  over  the  Meuse  as  one  came 
from  the  south  into  Sedan,  was  the  house  where  Louis 
Napoleon  had  been  on  that  day  in  1870.  Not  far 
away  on  the  other  side  of  the  street  was  an  old  lady 
in  a  booth  selling  picture  post-cards  of  the  place,  and 
of  her  I  bought  at  once  a  picture  of  that  Napoleon 
house. 

"I  shouldn't  have  wanted  to  own  this  before," 
said  I. 

"Oh,  no,  monsieur,"  she  answered,  "but  now  it 
makes  one  joy,  does  it  not?" 

Our  doughboys  seemed  to  swarm  in  the  town,  in 
the  middle  of  the  street,  on  the  sidewalks,  and  in  the 
house  and  tree-grown  yard  of  the  Cafe  de  la  So- 
quenette.  This  pleasant  establishment  did  a  brisk 
business,  and  as  we  ourselves  sat  there  pausing 
before  our  plunge  back  into  the  zone  of  utter  devas- 
tation, the  voices  of  the  doughboys  came  to  us  from 
tables  adjacent. 

"Well,"  said  one,  "I'm  told  that  the  boats  on  the 
Rhine  have  square  port-holes  to  fit  the  heads  of 
Germans." 

We  left  them  and  Sedan  behind  us.  We  had  come 
into  the  town  by  the  road  above  which  they  had  been 
stopped  by  the  Armistice,  in  their  forward  rush. 
This  road,  the  Meuse,  and  the  railway,  are  all  close 
together  at  this  particular  point,  to  which  three  of 


264  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

our  divisions  came — the  1st  on  November  7th,  the 
42nd  on  the  7th  and  8th,  the  77th  on  the  10th  and 
11th.  To  mark  this  farthest  fling  of  their  victorious 
tide,  a  memorial  stone  stands  today  above  the  road. 
This  I  passed  in  those  later  days  when  the  ticket 
agent  was  so  civil  to  me  upon  finding  I  was  an 
American.  I  hope  that  I  shall  drive  along  that  road 
some  day  again.  I  find  myself  wishing  to  linger  in 
words  upon  it  now,  instead  of  getting  away  from 
Sedan.  It  is  because  of  our  doughboys.  This  is  my 
last  chance  to  talk  about  them  when  they  were  at 
their  best,  and  I  am  loath  to  leave  it.  Discipline 
and  a  great  cause  lifted  thousands  high  above  their 
daily  selves  for  once  at  least,  and  for  this  they  should 
feel  gratitude  instead  of  demanding  pay.  The  flash 
of  Cantigny  revealed  their  mettle;  at  Belleau  Wood 
and  the  bridge-head  at  Chateau-Thierry  it  flashed 
again;  in  the  second  battle  of  the  Marne  the  flash 
widened  to  a  steady  blaze  of  established  certainty; 
St.  Mihiel  was  a  feat  well  and  quickly  done :  but  the 
Meuse-Argonne,  though  less  imprinted  on  the  popu- 
lar mind,  rises  above  them  all.  It  was  truly  a  long 
and  tough  battle,  and  virtually  all  their  own.  It  was 
difficult  in  every  way ;  through  bad  weather,  through 
bad  country,  inexpertly  fed  and  supplied  at  times,  on 
account  of  the  mud  and  the  strangulation  of  the  few 
highways  of  supply — and  against  more  and  more  of 
Germany's  best  men  fortified  behind  Germany's  best 
defences:  forty-seven  days  of  it;  nothing  like  it  in 
the  whole  history  of  the  nation.  If  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  being  too  proud  to  fight,  the  American 
doughboy  was  sorely  lacking  in  it. 

You  must  not  look  at  human  nature  with  a  micro- 
scope alone ;  distortion  is  the  consequence.    Even  the 


LAST   LAP   TO   ARMISTICE  265 

calendared  saints  were  sometimes  sinners,  and  the 
dongliboy  was  no  saint.  Moreover,  in  his  mobilized 
ranks  abroad  were  enlisted  professional  criminals, 
who  escaped  from  discipline  and  degraded  his  name 
by  their  foul  deeds  in  Paris  until  a  heavy  hand  closed 
upon  them — while  in  his  demobilized  ranks  at  home 
are  guard-house  lawyers,  politicians,  pension  sharks, 
who  also  degrade  his  name  and  drive  many  of  the 
best  of  him  to  resign  from  the  organization  which 
held  at  its  beginning  a  hope  too  ideal  to  come  true 
in  a  world  like  this.  None  of  these  things  has  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  doughboy  and  his  battles  in 
France.  He  came,  often  most  unwillingly,  from  a 
nation  that  hates  war,  and  once  in  it  he  so  conducted 
himself  in  that  quarrel  that  his  adversary  was  ware 
of  him.  Then  he  lived  his  great  moment  when  disci- 
pline and  the  cause  made  him  more  of  a  man  than 
he  had  ever  been  before.  He  showed  himself  a  ter- 
rible fighter — those  other  terrible  fighters,  the  Aus- 
tralians, found  him  "a  bit  rough."  He  proved  a 
soldier  dogged,  aggressive,  enterprising,  and  humor- 
ous— nobody  better  than  he  at  the  game.  He  also 
showed  himself  a  lover  of  children,  an  adept  in  ath- 
letic sport,  a  too  lavish  spender,  and  keenly  appre- 
ciative of  hospitality:  not  in  every  case,  of  course: 
avoid  the  microscope.  A  good  name  lingers  behind 
him.  I  wish  that  all  of  him  were  still  as  worthy 
today.  And  so  my  chances  to  dwell  upon  him,  my 
American  brother,  end.  My  last  close  sight  of  him 
was  in  Sedan,  gay  beneath  the  trees  of  the  Cafe  de 
la  Soquenette,  conversing  about  Rhine  steamers  that 
fitted  their  port-holes  to  the  square  heads  of  the 
Germans. 


266  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

We  left  Sedan  by  another  way  and  went  along  by 
another  river,  la  Chiers,  which  comes  into  the  Meuse 
just  above  Sedan,  and  goes  through  Carignan,  Mont- 
medy,  and  Longuyon,  as  we  also  did.  All  that  road 
was  also  along  or  near  the  Metz-Mezieres  artery, 
whose  strangling  by  us  throttled  Germany's  last 
breath  and  threw  her  on  her  knees,  praying  to  be 
spared.  There  was  no  way  of  not  granting  that 
petition;  but  prayers  granted  to  Germany  do  not 
improve  her  soul.  Greater  tragedy  than  the  pre- 
mature Armistice  and  the  belated  Treaty  cannot  be 
met  in  history.  We  saw  the  chimneys  of  the  Briey 
basin,  whence  Germany  got  much  mineral  help  for 
the  war,  until  we  cut  it  off  from  her — and  then  in 
one  of  those  strange  moments  that  was  like  some 
evil  magic,  growing  trees  and  living  houses  ended, 
and  we  re-entered  the  awful  Thing  and  the  awful 
Silence. 

"For  mark!  No  sooner  was  I  fairly  found 
Pledged  to  the  plain,  after  a  pace  or  two, 

Than,  pausing  to  throw  backward  a  last  view 

To  the  safe  road,  'twas  gone !  grey  plain  all  round : 

Nothing  but  plain  to  the  horizon 's  bound. 
I  might  go  on ;  nought  else  remained  to  do. 

"As  for  the  grass,  it  grew  as  scant  as  hair 
In  leprosy — thin  dry  blades  pricked  the  mud 

Which  underneath  looked  kneaded  up  with  blood. 
And  more  than  that — a  furlong  on — why  there ! 

What  bad  use  was  that  engine  for,  that  wheel, 
Or  brake,  not  wheel — that  harrow  fit  to  reel 

Men's  bodies  out  like  silk?" 

Had  he  who  wrote  that  passed  in  vision  seventy 
years  beforehand  over  this  ground  of  the  Woevre 
and  the  Meuse- Argonne? 


XXII 


VERDUN 


Somewhere  far  back  along  our  way,  near  its  begin- 
ning, I  had  remembered  that  line  of  mystery  in  Lear: 
"The  worst  is  not  while  we  can  say,  This  is  the 
Worst."  The  words  came  back  to  me  as  we  for  the 
first  time  neared  Verdun;  and  Verdun  has  caused 
my  speech  to  die  away  at  every  sight  of  it  that  I 
have  had  since.  On  its  heights  and  in  its  hollows 
I  have  walked  with  friends,  none  of  us  speaking  a 
word.  Nothing  that  I  or  any  man  can  say,  or  any 
picture,  will  make  you  know  what  Verdun  is.  Music 
might  steep  the  spirit  in  the  same  mood.  It  is  best 
such  a  thing  should  have  to  be  seen,  should  cost 
effort;  could  its  whole  reality  be  carried  about  in 
books  and  spread  on  laps,  even  it  would  be  cheap- 
ened. As  it  is,  you  must  go  there  to  know  it  all, 
you  must  climb  about  among  its  barbed  and  wasted 
mounds,  and  stand  high  up  a  long  while,  and  look 
slowly  down  over  the  torn  sea  of  shell  holes  to  the 
bottom  and  across  the  wide  plain  there,  pock-marked 
and  patterned  by  the  blasts  of  war.  Whiffs  of  the 
rotting  dead  are  no  longer  blown  to  your  nostrils 
as  you  go  about ;  on  that  first  day  they  were.  Writ- 
ten in  my  notes  on  the  spot,  at  the  moment,  is  this : 

"Douaumont.  Pools,  humps,  stones,  corrugated 
fragments,  dead  distance,  dead  near  by,  stumps,  steel 
rail,  rusted  bits,  whiffs  from  the  dead,  human  bones 
(a  German  grave,  his  shoes,  his  bones,  a  cross  of 
twigs  unnamed),  a  pool  with  thirty  dead  in  it,  and 
larks  in  the  sky. ' ' 

Sitting  at  Douaumont  and  staring,  it  seemed  as  if 

267 


268  NEIGHBOKS   HENCEFORTH 

all  the  miles  of  sacred  ways  we  had  travelled  led 
here ;  as  if  we  had  been  coming  here  ever  since  Com- 
piegne,  through  Amiens,  Reims,  everywhere,  the 
whole  journey  being  inevitably  to  bring  us  to  this. 
In  my  thought  I  could  see  Reims  and  Amiens  back 
on  the  road — truer  to  say,  they  came  and  stood  in 
my  thoughts  suddenly.  They  were  this,  and  this 
but  a  piece  of  them,  just  like  the  French  boy  who 
wrote  the  letters,  just  like  the  whole  of  magnificent, 
tragic  France. 

As  you  come  in  one  way  from  Etain,  the  white 
dead  fingers  of  the  trees  begin  their  stiff  gesture 
along  the  ridges.  They  beckon  motionlessly,  spread- 
ing their  ranks  over  the  undulating  dearth.  Stark 
and  thin,  with  crazed  knuckle  joints,  they  show  that 
something  wrong  has  happened  to  them,  that  they  did 
not  die  naturally,  but  were  murdered.  They  stretch 
around  Tavannes  and  on  to  Vaux,  in  groves,  or 
by  twos  and  threes,  or  sometimes  just  one  flayed 
bone,  sticking  up  from  meshes  of  barbed  wire  and 
bumps  of  slaughtered  earth.  This  ground,  Vaux  and 
Douaumont,  just  these  two  fortresses,  only  a  part  of 
Verdun's  large  circle  of  strongholds,  was  where  dur- 
ing four  months  10,000  shells  of  8  inches  and  larger 
fell  every  day.  Multiply  it — one  hundred  and  twenty 
times  ten  thousand.  How  is  it  that  any  trees  at  all 
still  stand  to  show  that  they  were  murdered?  What 
wonder  that  all  the  men  still  alive  by  the  ninth  day 
of  it  were  weeping1? 

"They  shall  not  pass."  That  was  Petain's  prom- 
ise about  the  Huns. 

Before  they  knew  that  they  never  could  pass,  the 
earth  had  become  like  this,  and  it  was  November — 
they  had  begun  to  try  to  pass  in  February.    Over 


VERDUN  269 

at  Les  Eparges  not  very  far  to  our  southeast,  70,000 
French  had  been  killed;  of  these  dead,  there  were 
8,000  not  in  shreds,  the  other  62,000  were  mere  name- 
less drops  of  blood  and  bits  of  flesh.  That  seems  bad 
— but  what  was  the  cost  of  life  here  to  prevent  the 
Germans  passing?  To  save  Verdun,  four  hundred 
thousand  French  were  killed,  and  of  these  were  found 
eighty  thousand  that  still  were  human  bodies.  Of 
these  bodies  about  one-half  could  be  identified.  On 
the  forlorn  hill  beside  the  road,  and  opposite  the 
path  that  leads  to  Douaumont,  is  a  wooden  building, 
a  sort  of  chapel  for  the  fragments  of  the  featureless, 
dismembered  dead.  A  good  man,  the  Padre  Noel, 
lives  here  in  the  wilderness,  to  be  near  these  bones 
and  give  them  sacred  shelter  as  fast  as  they  are 
found.  They  are  being  carefully  searched  for  and 
almost  every  day  more  are  collected.  Some  came 
from  quite  near,  in  a  pinched  little  gully,  the  Ravin 
de  la  Dame.  Five  hundred  were  killed  in  this  place 
and  buried ;  but  later  fighting  wiped  all  these  graves 
away.  In  Padre  Noel's  chapel  stood  fifty-two  coffins 
full  of  nameless  bones  on  the  last  day  I  was  there. 
More  are  there  now.  All  will  never  be  found  in  that 
wild  continent  of  obliteration ;  but  in  time,  instead  of 
the  wooden  chapel,  houses  more  permanent  for  those 
bones  will  stand  there:  churches  where  all  the  be- 
reaved of  every  faith  may  come  and  say  their  prayers 
— a  church  for  Catholics  and  one  for  Protestants, 
one  for  Jews  and  one  for  Mohammedans;  the  fami- 
lies of  every  race  that  died  fighting  for  Verdun  will 
have  a  sacred  roof  beneath  which  they  can  kneel  and 
feel  at  home  and  think  of  their  dead.  Or,  if  they  live 
too  far  away,  or  are  too  poor  to  come,  they  can  know 
that  Padre  Noel  is  there  watching  over  the  coffins, 


270  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

and  that  when  his  watch  is  over,  another  will  follow 
him.  Of  the  four  hundred  thousand  French  killed 
at  Verdun,  eighty  thousand  were  fairly  whole,  forty 
thousand  recognizable :  our  American  total  of  deaths 
(to  September  1,  1919)  was  81,141,  of  which  35,556 
were  killed  in  action — or  about  the  same  number  that 
were  recognizable  after  Verdun. 

I  wanted  to  climb  down  to  the  bottom  of  Vaux. 
It  was  a  good  long  descent;  but  with  the  earth  in 
natural  state,  half  an  hour  would  have  been  more  than 
enough.  With  the  earth  as  it  was,  I  got  a  little  way 
below  the  flat  top  of  the  fortress  and  went  no  farther. 
I  was  among  barbed  wire,  I  had  crossed  some  sag- 
ging strands  of  it,  more  of  it  was  ahead ;  all  the  way 
down,  fence  after  fence  of  it  encircled  the  slope,  each 
but  a  few  yards  apart.  This  was  to  climb  over,  with 
a  ground  to  walk  on  that  was  ditched  deep  with 
trenches  and  so  tossed  and  gutted  that,  had  I  made 
the  attempt,  I  should  have  been  letting  my  body 
down  into  holes  and  pulling  it  up  at  every  dozen  steps. 
It  would  have  taken  all  that  morning,  even  if  none 
of  the  wire  proved  impassable.  So  I  stopped  where 
I  was  and  looked  at  the  great  view.  I  had  seen  it 
before  in  the  days  when  no  moving  or  living  thing 
could  be  descried.  Today  the  slow  smoke  of  a  train, 
creeping  out  from  the  deep  folds  of  the  hills  on 
its  way  to  the  open  spaces  of  reconstruction,  marked 
the  solitude.  Its  sound  did  not  come  up  to  me  as  I 
watched  it  wind  out  of  sight.  It  ran  on  a  road-bed 
between  shell  holes,  dug-outs  and  the  blur  of  barbed 
wire,  and  once  it  stopped  at  a  demolished  station. 
Beyond  this,  the  hills  opened  upon  the  plain  stretch- 
ing to  the  forest  of  Spincourt.  It  was  from  this 
wood  that  the   Germans  descended  upon  Verdun. 


VERDUN  271 

The  distance  was  wan,  effaced,  of  hues  lighter  or 
darker,  according  as  the  land  was  open  or  wooded. 
Thus  the  distance ;  near  at  hand,  the  broken  upheaval, 
the  bristling  wire,  the  waste  of  splinters,  slanted 
weeds,  and  stones.  A  grave  was  here.  No  others. 
It  had  the  hill  to  itself.  It  was  close  against  one  of 
the  barbed  wire  fences.  I  made  my  way  to  it  and 
copied  the  inscription  on  the  wooden  cross : 

Leon  Fautier 

30  Avril  1916 

119fe  Beg4  d'infantrie 

That  day  had  been  the  38th  of  the  siege  of  Verdun. 
How  many  shells  by  then  had  fallen  on  Vaux?  And 
why  was  Leon  Fautier  not  sleeping  in  some  cemetery 
with  comrades  for  company?  Had  he  fallen  here, 
and  had  his  people  wished  that  he  stay  here?  The 
cross  was  set  in  rubble  and  supported  by  stones  and 
the  rusting  shells  of  the  75  gun.  Not  a  wreath,  not 
a  leaf,  lay  on  this  naked  grave. 

Such  is  Vaux.  Such  it  was  in  May  1919,  and  two 
years  later  it  was  unchanged.  Exactly  like  it  is  its 
neighbor  Douaumont.  In  both  you  may  descend  and 
be  shown  their  dark  interiors :  a  great  disappearing 
gun  with  its  levers  and  machinery ;  the  hospital ;  the 
surgery;  the  chapel;  where  the  commander  slept; 
where  the  soldiers  lived;  their  well  of  water;  the 
place  where  the  Germans  came  in;  the  gallery  of  a 
frightful  battle — the  walls  look  stone-deaf  from  it; 
and  other  galleries  and  labyrinths  which  you  do  not 
explore,  but  merely  peer  into;  all  by  the  light  of  a 
lamp  held  up  for  you  by  a  grave  poilu.  He  points 
to  where  the  tunnels  lead  to  the  tunnelled  citadel  in 
Verdun  itself,  ten  miles  away.    You  can  visit  like- 


272  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

wise  this  enormous  underground  place  and  its  gal- 
leries; its  chapel;  its  dining-room;  where  soldiers 
and  civilians  lived  in  shelter  during  the  siege  of  the 
city  in  which  every  house  was  struck  but  one.  It  is 
all  strange  and  solemn;  not  to  be  missed;  but  you 
will  learn  more  in  the  outside  air.  Books  have  been 
written  about  Verdun,  many  books  already,  a  shelf 
of  them,  well-nigh  a  literature.  They  are  good,  too, 
some  of  them,  well  worth  reading — the  last  days  of 
the  Fort  de  Vaux,  for  instance.  But  you  will  learn 
more  in  the  outside  air.  Walk  in  the  city,  walk  in 
the  plains,  go  up  the  hills  and  look  down.  Find  some 
chauffeur  who  fought  through  it  all  the  four  years, 
and  is  here  still,  and  will  tell  you  about  it,  if  he  feel 
that  you  care.  Talk  to  Padre  Noel  among  his  coffins. 
I  walked  away  from  him  across  the  road  and  wan- 
dered along  the  path  that  leads  to  Douaumont.  Pres- 
ently this  changes  to  planks  and  later  accompanies 
the  light  rails  of  the  little  war  railroad.  It  goes 
among  and  over  trenches.  Some  of  them  are  kept 
as  they  were,  but  most  are  melting  in  the  wet  and 
crumbling  in  the  dry.  In  the  bottom  of  one  of  these 
shelters  I  passed  near  two  women  in  black.  They 
were  so  still  that  they  might  have  been  something 
come  from  another  world.  They  held  a  paper  and 
looked  down  at  it.  I  went  on  to  where  the  path  and 
railroad  end  below  the  abrupt,  gashed  summit.  This 
was  two  years  after  I  had  written  in  my  diary  upon 
my  first  sight  of  Douaumont.  In  the  later  diary 
come  these  words:  "Walked  to  Douaumont.  Rusted 
debris — lumps — larks — pools — silence."  I  climbed 
to  the  top.  There  was  the  unchanged  sight,  the  de- 
scents of  barbed  wire,  the  unfolding  hills,  the  stretch- 
ing distance,  wan,  effaced.    I  explored  for  a  while, 


VERDUN  273 

and  came  down  the  steep  banks  to  the  plank  path 
again,  and  so  back  among  the  trenches.  Still  the  two 
women  were  down  in  that  shelter,  motionless,  black, 
their  paper  in  hand.  I  guessed  right  what  brought 
them.  Every  day,  I  learned,  came  women  like  this 
with  papers  by  which  they  are  guided  to  the  spot 
where  their  living  became  their  dead.  There  they 
stay,  remembering. 

Thus,  walking  about  in  the  air,  and  stopping,  it 
sinks  into  you:  the  murdered  trees,  the  forts,  the 
scarred  hills  rising  out  of  silence  into  silence,  and 
motionless  women  in  black,  pilgrims  to  the  foot  of 
earth  on  which  their  sons  and  husbands  fell. 

After  such  a  sight,  more  sights  followed,  as  the 
road  from  Padre  Noel  and  his  house  of  coffins  sinks 
to  levels  below;  it  passes  the  Trench  of  Bayonets, 
the  ravine  where  the  buried  dead  were  torn  out  of 
their  graves  by  later  violence;  it  winds  through  a 
tormented  region,  gashed,  discolored,  quarried  with 
shelter  holes  like  rows  of  ovens,  scribbled  with 
trenches,  blotched  with  craters — the  Cote  du  Poivre ; 
then  it  comes  out  beyond  these  ravaged  steeps  and 
slants  to  the  level  ravage  along  the  Meuse,  the 
tumbled  village  of  Bras,  the  impassable  streets  of 
Verdun  itself. 

One  road  threaded  through  the  town;  into  the 
others,  as  at  Reims,  the  houses  had  fallen,  barri- 
cading passage.  By  climbing  over  their  heaps  one 
could  make  one's  way  on  foot  from  one  end  of  a 
street  to  the  other,  but  in  no  other  manner.  When 
next  I  saw  these  stones  two  years  later,  they  were 
not  yet  built  back  again  into  houses;  that  will  take 
a  long  time;  they  had  been  cleared  away  from  the 
streets  and   stood  upon  their  land,   symmetrically 


274  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

piled  in  lerel  cubes,  each  stone  numbered  to  mark 
its  identity.  The  jostled  disorder  of  races  at  Verdun 
in  the  early  day  was  as  mingled  as  the  stones  which 
blocked  the  thoroughfare.  We  had  our  lunch  in  a 
Y  canteen  that  had  been  a  house  of  which  enough 
remained  for  this  purpose.  Its  street  front  was 
fairly  whole,  its  back  gaped  upon  a  court  into  which 
the  rest  of  this  house  and  parts  of  its  neighbors  had 
been  hurled.  Timbers  lay  there,  and  the  twisted  iron 
of  a  balcony,  and  a  plaster  Virgin,  and  over  these 
things  hung  a  pair  of  drawers  recently  washed.  Eat- 
ing together  in  the  room  were  Russians,  French, 
Americans,  negroes,  and  behind  the  counter  serving 
them  stood  American  women  in  blue  caps.  Here  and 
there  in  doorways  stood  German  prisoners.  Near 
me  was  a  negro  soldier  from  Virginia  who  told  me 
that  his  name  was  Lee;  behind  him  sat  a  boy  from 
Oklahoma  who  said  that  he  was  glad  he  had  come 
because  "he  had  it  to  do,"  but  now  that  it  was  done 
he  would  like  to  get  home. 

Upon  the  townsfolk  and  the  peasant  mind,  what 
mark  was  left  by  this  huddled  medley  of  races  sud- 
denly pitched  everywhere  into  the  quiet  midst  of 
France?  A  very  slight  mark  upon  their  minds  it 
must  be,  after  four  years  of  fighting  for  their  lives. 
To  those  who  came  through  that,  no  sight  can  ever 
be  strange  again,  no  matter  what  is  destined  to  enter 
Verdun  by  its  ancient  gate,  beneath  which  have  al- 
ready passed  so  many  centuries  of  sights.  It  will 
leave  but  a  faint  impression  upon  the  French  mind. 
The  mark  upon  the  French  race  might  be  deeper, 
did  heredity  cope  evenly  with  environment — but  it 
does  not.  Those  half-French  offspring  of  unfor- 
given,  overtempted  mothers,  begotten  by  Mongolians, 


VERDUN  275 

Slavs,  Teutons,  Africans,  English,  Americans,  may 
—  some  of  them  at  least  —  have  tragic  childhoods ; 
to  the  nation  they  will  make  but  little  difference,  and 
most  of  them  will  come  to  count  as  wholly  French. 
Verdun  as  it  had  fallen  and  still  lay,  was  without 
shape;  Verdun  with  its  stones  piled  in  the  blank 
spaces  where  its  houses  had  stood  once,  was  like  a 
mouth  with  many  teeth  gone.  But  no  gaps  were  in 
the  sane,  determined  spirit ;  not  a  voice,  unless  after 
some  intimacy  of  acquaintance,  told  you  of  loss,  or 
of  hardship,  but  only  of  going  on,  of  determination 
to  come  back  to  full  life  and  vigor,  no  matter  how 
long  the  struggle  might  be.  By  the  Meuse,  where 
it  runs  through  the  town  sluggishly,  is  a  little  public 
square,  the  place  Chevert,  named  to  honor  a  soldier 
of  Verdun.  With  top-boots  and  sword,  his  spirited 
statue  rises  in  the  middle  of  the  square ;  underneath 
is  his  name  and  rank:  Chevert,  Lieutenant  General, 
1695-1769.  Upon  another  face  of  the  pedestal  are 
words  recording  that  the  fact  that  he  never  became 
a  marshal  is  a  loss,  not  to  him,  but  to  those  who 
choose  him  for  their  model — and  then,  upon  still 
another  face,  an  account  of  him  so  proud  that  I  wish 
the  words  into  which  I  must  translate  it  could  equal 
the  fire  which  thrills  through  the  original: 

Without  Ancestors, 
Without  fortune,  without  influence, 
Orphan  from  childhood, 
He  entered  the  Service 

aged  eleven  years. 

He  rose  in  spite  of  envy 

by  force  of  merit, 

And  each  upward  step 

was  the  reward 

of  a  noble  act. 


276  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"Well,"  I  have  thought  more  than  once,  as  I  have 
come  to  that  French  soldier's  statue  in  my  walks 
about  the  streets  of  his  native  city,  "he  was  like 
France  in  these  present  years — without  fortune, 
without  influence,  rising  in  spite  of  envy,  each  up- 
ward step  the  reward  of  a  noble  act." 

It  is  to  Verdun,  indeed,  that  all  the  sacred  ways 
conduct.  Even  after  travel  along  the  others,  by  the 
Lys,  by  the  Somme,  by  the  Marne,  and  east  to  the 
Vosges  by  Thann  and  Massevaux,  something  more 
which  these  have  not  spoken,  is  heard  in  that  silence 
there,  and  one  comes  from  it  with  knowledge  of 
France  still  deeper  than  even  Reims  and  Amiens 
could  impart. 

Go,  after  seeing  Vaux  and  Douaumont  and  all 
other  spots  which  are  included  in  the  word  Verdun, 
to  the  Mort  Homme.  Do  not  be  content  to  look  at 
that  hill  from  your  car  at  Cumieres;  leave  the  car 
and  walk  to  the  top  of  Dead  Man's  Hill,  and  stand 
there  beside  its  monument.  Give  to  this  an  after- 
noon, so  that  the  light  of  the  ending  day  may  shine 
upon  that  sight  and  mingle  with  your  thoughts. 
From  there  is  plain  each  way  they  came  upon  Ver- 
dun ;  first  on  the  east  side  of  the  Meuse  to  Vaux  and 
Douaumont — which  you  can  see  far  across  the  gulf 
of  silence ;  then,  because  the  fire  from  the  Avest  side 
forts  raked  them — Fort  de  la  Chaume,  Fort  du 
Chana,  Fort  des  Sartelles,  Fort  de  Choiseul,  Fort 
de  bois  Bourrus,  Fort  de  Marre,  Fort  du  Vacherau- 
ville — they  changed  their  plan  of  siege  and  came  on 
the  Mort  Homme  side  of  the  Meuse.  They  fell  by 
thousands  day  after  day,  but  still  came,  rising  as  it 
were  out  of  the  earth.  The  French  did  not  learn  for 
some  time  that  it  was  really  a  tunnel  through  which 


VERDUN  277 

they  made  their  way  under  the  hills  from  the  northern 
slope  towards  Forges.  Hill  304  was  part  of  this 
battle-ground.  In  a  circle  stand  the  heights  from 
which  the  French  poured  their  lire.  Sometimes  this 
huge  cup  of  country  was  a  roar  of  flames  to  its  rim, 
and  it  wears  today  the  Charred  look  of  ordeal.  It 
puts  you  once  more  in  mind  of  the  four  hundred 
thousand  French  who  died  here,  of  whom  forty  thou- 
sand could  be  recognized.  Those  men  had  to  fight 
so  hard  lest  the  Huns  pass  that  there  could  be  no 
stopping,  they  were  given  no  breathing  spell,  until 
70  per  cent,  of  any  command  was  wounded  or  killed ; 
then  the  surviving  remnant  could  pause  and  wait  a 
while  until  its  strength  was  filled  by  new  men,  and 
sleep  and  change  had  made  it  fit  to  go  in  again. 

Over  Dead  Man's  Hill  the  sky  itself  seems  to  grow 
more  solemn.  From  its  summit  the  earth  sinks  away, 
north,  east,  and  west,  in  furrow  after  furrow  of  frag- 
ments. The  receding  lumps  merge  and  stretch  to  the 
feet  of  distant  hills,  or  to  the  horizon.  The  eye  looks 
across  the  wide  valley  to  Vaux,  or  toward  Montfau- 
con,  over  a  world  that  might  be  a  planet  after  death ; 
a  planet  that  did  not  burn  out  and  chill  gradually,  but 
was  violently  killed  through  some  last  encounter 
between  the  forces  that  created  it.  One  thinks,  Will 
man's  engines,  greater  than  he  already,  break  wholly 
from  his  control  and  in  the  end  be  able  to  tear  the 
world  to  dust,  so  that  as  dust  it  floats  on  through 
space — or  will  man  sometime  be  so  taught  by  what 
war  has  done  that  he  will  cease  to  wage  it  and  will 
not  have  to  die  before  he  find  peace? 

Nothing  that  you  see  from  Dead  Man's  Hill  gives 
an  answer.  You  go  on  looking  at  the  sky,  at  the 
quiet,  pitiful  miles ;  and  here,  still  more  than  at  Mont- 


278  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

faucon,  the  tidal  wave  of  silence  rolls  in  and  covers 
the  place  deep.  It  is  gigantic,  but  yet  so  wistful,  so 
yearning,  so  potent,  that  you  come  to  feel  it  is  a  sort 
of  being  made  of  a  million  beings,  and  has  a  message, 
and  might  speak  if  rightly  commanded. 

It  went  with  me  away  from  the  hill,  north  to 
Brieulles  and  across  the  Meuse  there.  As  we  came 
back  along  that  east  side  of  the  river  through  Sivry, 
and  Consenvoye  where  the  German  line  had  been,  and 
then  Brabant  where  had  been  the  French  line,  and  the 
ground  and  the  ruin  never  changed,  it  seemed  to  enter 
me.  Rain  began  to  fall  and  light  was  leaving  the  day. 
Every  village  was  a  heap  of  stones,  many  houses 
blown  out  of  all  shape.  In  some  houses  that  were 
half  left,  a  single  light  burned,  and  you  saw  a  peasant, 
man  or  woman,  after  the  day's  work  upon  the  shell 
holes,  entering  home  for  the  night.  Along  this  road, 
I  think  in  Consenvoye,  one  half-ruin  had  passed  by 
upon  which  remained  the  solitary  German  word: 
Spielhaus. 


PART   SECOND 

TWO  YEARS  AFTER 

In  the  long  run  even  a  gloomy  truth  is  better  company 
than  a  cheerful  falsehood. 

Augustine  Birrell,  Res  Judicata. 


XXIII 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE 


Soon  after  seeing  Verdun  I  came  home,  where,  with 
far  too  many  Americans,  the  war  was  out  of  sight  and 
out  of  mind.  Moreover,  great  numbers  of  my  fellow- 
countrymen  were  still  of  the  stale,  misdirected 
opinion  that  we  owed  our  ally,  England,  nothing 
but  a  grudge.  Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  England  is 
quite  the  best  thing  since  Home,  better  than  Eome, 
and  not  only  the  real  cradle  of  American  liberty  but 
its  constant  friend,  although  she  once  tried  to  upset 
the  child  and  has  since  then  rocked  it  rather  violently 
at  times.  History,  which  has  been  concealed  from 
American  youth  by  the  grudgers,  shows  unanswer- 
ably that  England  has  never  allowed  other  nations  to 
be  rough  with  her  offspring,  invariably  saying 
"hands  off"  to  all  comers  who  meditated  assault — to 
Germany  last  and  most  emphatically  in  1898.  A  cen- 
tury of  suppressed  facts  shows  the  distortion  instilled 
into  the  American  mind  by  school  histories  and  poli- 
ticians who  want  Irish  votes.  These  facts  I  gathered 
and  printed,  and  it  took  a  long  while  to  make  a  short 
book.  Then  I  set  to  work  upon  my  second  debt  of 
honor,  this  time  to  France  who,  next  to  England,  is 
the  greatest  thing  since  Eome,  and  our  next  best 
friend.  The  truth  is  that  since  the  surrender  of 
Cornwallis  in  1781,  France  on  the  whole  has  been  less 
good  than  England  to  us,  and  has  given  us  more  oc- 

281 


282  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

casions  for  a  grudge,  if  grudge  were  possible ;  but  it 
is  not ;  no  American  can  forget  what  France  did  for 
us  in  the  darkest  day  of  our  childhood,  and  the  high 
example  of  generosity  which  she  set  in  the  first  treaty 
of  alliance  that  she  made  with  us :  she  was  to  receive 
no  compensation  for  her  help.  This  was  unprece- 
dented in  history,  and  our  following  the  precedent  in 
1918  squares  no  account  in  decent  minds,  because 
between  friends  there  can  be  no  question  of  such 
accounts. 

More  than  a  dozen  of  the  preceding  chapters  had 
been  written ;  it  was  late  in  1920 ;  I  had  not  been  back 
to  see  the  devastated  regions,  but  many  whom  I  knew 
had  been  there.  Had  they  all  told  me  the  same  story, 
there  would  have  been  nothing  to  do  but  believe  them 
and  go  on  writing  this  book;  but  the  stories  would 
have  bewildered  any  one:  France  was  doing  very 
well,  France  was  doing  very  badly,  she  was  rich,  she 
was  poor,  she  was  working  nobly  to  get  on  her  feet, 
she  was  perfectly  idle  and  waiting  for  Germany's 
reparation  money,  she  was  militaristic  and  making 
all  the  trouble  there  was,  she  was  not  militaristic  and 
she  wanted  only  to  be  let  alone.  What  was  there  to 
do  but  go  over  again  and  see  for  myself?  I  went 
accordingly  for  two  months — and  stayed  eight,  be- 
cause to  see  everything  and  hear  everything  and  after 
that  to  know  my  own  mind  clearly,  was  quite  beyond 
my  powers,  unless  I  took  my  time  over  it.  I  did  not 
see  everything,  but  certainly  I  saw  France,  and  I 
heard  everything  else  from  very  close. 

My  pilgrimage  in  chaos  tangible  had  ended  at 
Verdun,  and  now  began  a  journey  in  chaos  intangible, 
chaos  politic,  moral,  financial,  paper  nations,  paper 
money,   crumbling   friendships,   gathering   hatreds, 


OLD   ACQUAINTANCE  283 

misery  and  menace  so  appalling,  that  the  tragedy  of 
the  peace  grew  blacker  to  me  than  the  tragedy  of  the 
war  and  for  a  while  I  conld  not  see  the  wood  for  the 
trees.  Merely  to  read  the  morning  paper  was  to  renew 
each  day  yesterday's  restlessness,  as  in  the  war 
times ;  but  this  new  restlessness  was  as  much  subtler 
than  the  old  had  been  as  poison  gas  is  more  subtle 
than  bullets.  Good  news  came  during  the  war  some- 
times, it  never  came  now ;  in  a  word,  civilization,  after 
its  four  years'  sleepless  battle  for  life,  had  entered 
upon  no  healing  period  of  rest,  but  had  merely  passed 
from  one  state  of  insomnia  into  another.  What  was 
happening  to  Wrangel  ?  Was  Austrian  starvation  be- 
ing relieved?  Were  the  English  miners  to  strike?  Was 
the  plebiscite  in  Upper  Silesia  to  be  dominated  by 
Prussia?  Was  the  Irish  question  nearer  solution? 
Were  they  going  to  cut  down  Germany's  reparation 
any  further?  Would  she  pay  her  next  instalment? 
It  was  for  answers  to  such  questions  as  these  that 
one  opened  the  morning  paper,  instead  of  to  see  what 
was  happening  on  the  West  Front.  There  was  no 
west  or  any  other  front,  no  Hindenburg  Line  between 
warring  forces,  the  new  evil  was  invisible  and  crossed 
all  fronts  like  a  pestilence.  Paper  money  is  the  mor- 
phine of  economic  insomnia,  as  vain  and  dangerous  a 
drug,  and  many  governments  in  Europe  were  giving 
themselves  weekly  injections  of  it.  Through  the  con- 
tinuous convulsions  in  exchange,  a  traveller  with 
American  money  could  live  in  Vienna  or  Warsaw  or 
Buda  Pesth  luxuriously  for  about  ten  dollars  a  week, 
while  on  the  other  hand  an  Austrian  who  had  buried 
in  his  garden  a  fortune  equal  to  a  thousand  dollars  in 
1914,  would  find  it  equal  to  less  than  two  dollars  if 
he  should  dig  it  up.    While  these  earthquakes  rocked 


284  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

the  buying  and  selling  of  Europe,  England's  unem- 
ployment dole  had  merely  helped  to  beget  industrial 
paralysis  and  a  breed  of  bribed  idlers.  These 
marched  through  London  streets  in  small,  mean 
processions  flanked  by  policemen,  their  flags  and 
their  faces  all  one  piece  of  ignoble  discontent.  Every 
one  in  England  seemed  to  be  hard  at  work  except 
the  laboring  classes,  whose  aim,  apparently,  was 
to  make  a  second  Russia  of  Great  Britain.  I  know 
of  a  gardener  who  gave  his  employer  notice,  and  on 
being  asked  if  he  was  dissatisfied  replied,  no,  but 
that  he  could  get  higher  wages  for  walking  in  the 
procession  of  the  unemployed. 

Such  was  the  background  of  my  new  pilgrimage, 
every  day  being  crowded  with  experiences  and  con- 
versations so  vivid  and  engrossing,  that  only  at  cer- 
tain times  when  I  was  alone  did  the  menace  which 
threatened  us  all — and  is  nearer  now — darken  my 
enjoyment. 

I  went  over  every  foot  of  the  devastated  regions 
that  I  had  seen  two  years  before,  and  all  the  rest  that 
I  had  not  then  seen — from  Ypres  to  Alsace  and  every- 
thing between ;  the  Somme  four  times,  the  Aisne  four 
times,  Champagne  once,  the  Meuse-Argonne  twice, 
St.  Mihiel  once,  the  Vosges  once.  I  began  these 
journeys  early  in  February  and  finished  them  early 
in  August,  able  so  to  watch  the  land  in  different  sea- 
sons. I  went  as  the  guest  and  companion  of  French 
and  English  officers,  with  friends,  and  alone ;  meeting 
everywhere  official  and  unofficial  courtesy  all  the 
more  friendly  when  it  was  discovered  that  I  had  come 
on  my  own  errand,  the  representative  of  nobody  and 
nothing  except  my  own  desire  to  ascertain  the  truth 
and  tell  it.    I  spent  one  deeply  interesting  week  at 


OLD   ACQUAINTANCE  285 

Geneva,  meeting  under  auspices  that  I  can  never 
forget  the  members  of  the  Secretariat  of  the  League 
of  Nations.  I  heard  of  their  work  from  themselves. 
I  saw  where  they  did  it,  I  talked  with  several  of  them 
at  length.  I  felt  as  if  I  listened  to  statesmen,  not  to 
politicians.  I  came  away  to  grow  steadily  more 
sorry  than  ever  that  the  reservations  made  by  our 
Senate  should  have  been  rejected  by  Mr.  Wilson.  In 
the  opinion  of  Lord  Grey  they  were  proper,  and  M. 
Andre  Tardieu,  one  of  the  ablest  minds  in  France,  has 
written  in  his  book  that  they  were  no  grave  modifica- 
tion of  the  general  document.  I  wish  that  Mr.  Wil- 
son had  not  kept  us  out  of  the  League  of  Nations; 
we  could  do  no  better  thing  than  to  join  it  intelli- 
gently; various  small  countries  have  brought  their 
difficulties  to  it  with  success,  and  its  action  seems 
steadily  to  be  enlarging  in  scope  and  gaining  in 
authority.  Any  device  so  new  cannot  win  immediate 
acceptance,  and  none  so  complicated  should  have  been 
set  going  all  at  once.  I  am  even  of  opinion  that  it 
would  be  well  if  France  could  persuade  herself  to 
admit  Germany  into  the  League  if  ever  the  improb- 
able happen  and  Germany  give  to  her  and  to  the 
world  more  solid  proofs  than  she  has  so  far  of  "moral 
disarmament."  I  did  not  travel  in  Germany,  but  I 
met,  sometimes  daily,  English  and  Americans  and 
French  who  had  just  come  from  there,  and  whose 
reports  did  not  seem  to  me  wholly  reassuring.  For- 
tunately, the  convictions  which  I  have  been  able  to 
extract  from  my  second  pilgrimage  in  chaos  are  few 
and  clear : 

Is  France  militaristic?    No. 

Is  France  idle  f     No. 

Is  France  well  off?     No. 


286  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Are  those  Americans  right  who  wish  to  keep  up 
American  isolation  ?     No. 

There  they  are,  my  four  convictions;  but  before 
dealing  with  them,  I  must  say  that  nothing  I  found 
over  there  so  concerned  me  as  the  falling  apart  of 
England  and  France  and  the  falling  together  of  Eng- 
land and  Germany.  It  seemed  to  me  that  England 
was  forgetting  "Der  Tag"  rather  soon,  her  battles 
in  Flanders  and  Picardy  rather  soon,  and  rather  soon 
the  twenty  thousand  manufactories  and  five  hundred 
thousand  houses  that  in  France  had  been  laid  in 
partial  or  total  ruin.  Some  of  the  reasons  were 
natural  but  none  of  them  wise,  as  it  seemed  to  me, 
unless  there  were  complete  "moral  disarmament"  in 
Germany;  and  I  remembered  Benjamin  Franklin  at 
the  signing  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  when 
some  signer  had  remarked,  "We  must  all  hang  to- 
gether," and  Franklin  rejoined,  "Otherwise  we  shall 
all  hang  separately. "  It  seemed  to  me  that  the  Eng- 
lish were  forgetting  prematurely  that  in  1914  Ger- 
many's plan  had  been  to  hang  several  nations 
separately,  and  that  only  their  hanging  together  had 
stopped  her. 

Beneath  the  commercial  reasons  for  this  estrange- 
ment, lurked  two  which  may  be  termed  psychological. 
There  was  some  jealousy.  Each  had  been  necessary 
to  the  other's  salvation,  each  would  have  liked  it 
better  if  it  had  wholly  saved  the  other — although, 
could  this  have  happened,  the  other  (whichever  it 
was)  would  have  been  still  less  pleased.  Second,  the 
principle  of  old  acquaintance  was  asserting  itself 
quite  obviously  in  a  sort  of  inverted  manner;  one 
heard  of  unnatural  friends  and  foes.  Centuries  of 
enmity  lay  between  England  and  France,  and  but  four 


OLD    ACQUAINTANCE  287 

years  of  a  common  cause.  Once  the  common  cause 
was  removed,  old  acquaintance  would  not  be  forgot, 
and  this  acquaintance  was  hostile,  while  a  long  past 
of  friendship  lay  between  England  and  Germany. 
All  this  was  very  natural — and  very  undesirable.  It 
was  made  worse  by  a  misapplication  of  one  of  Eng- 
land's most  magnanimous  characteristics,  shaking 
hands  with  your  enemy  and  forgetting  all  about  your 
quarrel,  once  you  have  soundly  thrashed  him.  This 
does  very  well,  provided  two  things  are  true:  your 
enemy  must  give  you  an  honest  hand,  and  he  must  be 
your  enemy  alone ;  you  can 't  gracefully  shake  hands 
with  somebody  else 's  enemy.  It  does  not  seem  to  me 
that  Germany  has  given  an  honest  hand  to  anybody 
(unless  this  has  happened  very  lately  indeed)  and  I 
know  of  no  compelling  reason  to  believe  that  she  has 
ceased  to  be  the  enemy  of  France.  Why  should  she? 
Why  should  she  renounce — and  especially  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  Armistice  and  what  has  followed 
it — a  plan  of  world  dominion  for  which  she  has  skil- 
fully and  subtly  been  made  ready  for  so  long  a  time  1 
Prussia  began  to  train  the  grandfathers  of  the  Ger- 
mans who  fought  this  war.  Every  toy,  every  song, 
every  book,  every  teaching  from  their  nurseries  to 
their  manhood  has  instilled  three  generations  with 
love  of  the  Fatherland,  contempt  for  other  nations, 
faith  in  the  sacred  mission  of  Kultur,  and  conquest 
of  the  earth  to  spread  its  blessings — and  for  other 
benefits  of  a  more  material  kind.  Just  because  she 
failed  in  1918,  is  all  this  to  drop  off  Germany's  back 
like  a  change  of  linen1?  Were  I  a  German  and  had 
the  deep  and  sincere  belief  and  love  of  the  Father- 
land that  is  so  fine  a  passion  with  them,  it  would  not 
drop  off  me ;  it  would  be  part  of  my  soul. 


288  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"Oh,  you're  pro-French!"  said  an  English  friend 
to  me. 

Well,  it  must  have  happened  to  everyone  to  agree 
sometimes  with  one  friend  rather  than  with  another, 
and  in  this  case  I  am  bound  to  say  that  I  think  France 
has  the  right  of  it.  Some  of  her  spokesmen  have  put 
her,  by  their  impatience,  seemingly  in  the  wrong ;  but 
in  all  faith  and  justice  she  is  having  what  Americans 
call  a  ' '  raw  deal. ' ' 

Beside  the  causes  of  disagreement  already  named, 
is  one  for  which  it  is  even  more  difficult  to  find  any 
solution.  Without  two  things  no  nation  can  live: 
these  are  food  and  safety.  To  buy  food  England 
must  sell  goods  and  she  needs  Germany  as  a  market. 
But  France  has  to  be  safe;  she  has  seen  Germany 
overrun  her  twice  in  fifty  years  and  these  were  not  the 
first  times,  and  Germany  has  a  population  of  sixty- 
five  million  to  France's  thirty-eight.  Moreover, 
France  has  to  be  re-built  and  this  will  keep  Germany 
poor  if  she  pays.  But  if  Germany  is  poor,  how  is 
England  to  buy  bread,  since  so  much  of  her  money 
comes  from  what  she  sells  to  Germany?  If  Germany 
is  rich  she  can  invade  France  again.  Having  just 
been  half -killed,  France  does  not  wish  to  be  wholly 
slain. 

Here  is  a  clash  between  two  national  instincts  of 
self-preservation,  and  both  are  perfectly  just;  Eng- 
land must  live,  France  must  live ;  and  this  pressing 
fact  causes  each  to  have  an  inlook  which  is  larger 
than  their  outlook. 

To  an  Englishman  one  can  say: 

"Are  you  quite  sure  that  Germany  will  never  come 
after  you  again  1  Don 't  you  remember  how  sure  you 
were  that  she  wasn't  coming  in  1914?  Are  'Der  Tag* 


OLD   ACQUAINTANCE  289 

and  '  Gott  strafe  England '  wholly  turned  to  milk  and 
honey  1  And  aren't  you  forgetting  France's  experi- 
ence? When  you  talk  of  her  greedy  indemnity, 
aren  't  you  confusing  indemnity  with  reparation  ? ' ' 

To  a  Frenchman  one  can  say : 

"Do  you  want  England  to  go  under?  Don't  you 
think  she  might  be  useful  again  some  day  on  the 
Somme?  And  are  you  quite  consistent  when  you 
insist — as  at  times  you  do — that  Germany  must  be 
kept  poor  but  that  she  must  also  pay  you  about  eight 
hundred  million  dollars  in  gold  a  year?" 

But  to  an  American  one  must  say : 

"If  you  continue  to  consider  that  none  of  this  has 
anything  to  do  with  you,  you  are  the  biggest  fool  of 
the  lot." 

They  are  all  pushing  each  other  off  the  plank.  But 
need  old  acquaintances  fall  out  so  ?  Must  either  Eng- 
land or  France  go  under?  The  thought  is  unbear- 
able. Is  there  no  way  of  taking  turns  at  the  plank, 
and  making  land  together  somehow?  The  question 
is  really  much  wider  and  far  worse  than  this :  more 
than  two  nations  are  struggling  in  the  water  with  not 
enough  plank,  the  whole  of  western  civilization  is 
barely  keeping  its  head  above  the  surface ;  and  I  have 
slowly  and  very  reluctantly  been  forced  to  the  con- 
viction that  we  Americans  must  throw  this  civiliza- 
tion a  life-preserver;  not  because  it  is  virtuous  or 
humane  to  do  so — although  I  think  it  would  be  that — 
but  because  I  believe  that,  if  we  do  not,  we  shall  in 
the  end  be  dragged  under  ourselves.  Our  ship  of 
state  is  no  longer  a  solitary  craft  sailing  her  own 
voyage  to  her  own  port,  she  is  one  of  a  fleet,  and  the 
ports  are  all  the  same:  science  has  enabled  such 
increasing  millions  to  survive  who  used  to  perish; 


290  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

electricity  has  so  enmeshed  the  world  in  its  net,  that 
we  and  our  various  welfares  are  all  crowded  and 
woven  together  in  one  vast  common  interest ;  we  can- 
not get  out  of  the  net  if  we  would,  it  is  ultimately  sink 
or  swim,  live  or  die  together.  Difference  of  race,  of 
speech,  of  government,  of  religion,  of  anything  you 
please,  can  not  outweigh  the  huge  identity  of  bread. 
We  can  raise  enough  for  ourselves  no  doubt  for  a 
while,  but  does  any  one  who  has  grown  beyond  having 
a  brain  of  one  dimension,  and  can  see  commerce 
steadily  and  see  it  whole,  imagine  that  we  should  do 
well  if  all  the  rest  of  the  nations  were  to  die  of  starva- 
tion? How  about  Utah  Copper,  Baldwin  Locomotive 
Works,  Amoskeag  Mills,  how  about  Lowell,  Law- 
rence, Manchester,  Fall  River,  Bridgeport,  Pitts- 
burgh, Birmingham?  Could  all  the  industries  of  our 
country  sell  each  other  enough  to  keep  paying  divi- 
dends, or  the  interest  on  their  bonds?  Were  these  to 
fail,  all  fortunes  in  the  country  would  be  wiped  out, 
there  would  be  no  money  to  pay  labor  for  the  work  of 
its  hands,  no  money  to  pay  taxes  to  run  the  govern- 
ment, none  for  anything,  and  everything  would  stop ; 
we  should  arrive  where  Russia  is.  All  Europe  is  in 
sight  of  such  a  state,  and  if  it  overtakes  Europe,  our 
turn  will  inevitably  and  implacably  be  next.  Ruin 
will  stride  over  the  sea  and  tear  tariffs  and  senators 
to  scraps  of  paper.  Since  ours  is  the  only  ship  at 
present  afloat,  we  shall  have  to  throw  some  sort  of 
life-preserver  to  Europe.  Our  contribution  to  the  war 
should  be,  and  will  be,  supplemented.  Much  money 
that  we  lent  England  she  spent  upon  our  own  muni- 
tion plants  when  they  worked  for  her ;  only  through 
this  expenditure  were  they  sufficiently  equipped  to 
work  for  us  when  we  came  into  the  war ;  without  it, 


OLD   ACQUAINTANCE  291 

they  could  not  have  supplied  us.  If  we  count  as  our 
supplemental  contribution  every  dollar  that  we  lent 
England  which  she  spent,  so  to  speak,  at  the  front, 
or  which  she  loaned  her  allies  to  spend  there,  we 
shall  do  no  more  than  right.  We  shall  do  less  than 
right  if  we  fail  to  do  this. — But  when  a  man  has 
wrecked  his  own  life,  it  does  not  become  him  very 
well  to  patronize  those  who  are  helping  him  to  repair 
it.  Europe,  through  jealousies,  meanness,  greed,  and 
incompetence,  has  brought  herself  to  grief.  Less 
patronizing  on  the  part  of  Europeans  towards  Amer- 
icans would  oil  the  machinery  quite  a  little. 

France's  irritation  with  the  world  in  general  and 
with  her  recent  ally,  England,  in  particular,  is  just 
as  natural  and  just  as  little  wise,  as  the  feeling  in 
England  is  about  her.  France  is  not  idle,  not  militar- 
istic, nor  well  to  do;  she  knows  that  she  is  by  no 
means  out  of  the  woods,  and  she  feels  that  she  is 
forgotten. 

Her  enfevered  state  affected  the  pulse  of  almost 
every  sustained  conversation  that  I  held  with  her 
people.  I  recall  how  it  disturbed  the  serene  and  mel- 
low loveliness  of  a  Sunday  afternoon  in  Beaune,  when 
spring  was  coming  slowly  up  that  way  and  the  winter 
twigs  seemed  visibly  to  be  growing  warm.  I  was  de- 
fending England,  when  my  companion  broke  out : 

''It  is  easy  for  them.  They  are  as  uninvaded  as 
Germany  herself. ' ' 

"Think  of  their  dead  on  your  soil,"  I  responded. 

"We  do  think  of  them.  Do  they  often  think  of 
ours?  They  do  not  see  our  graves,  while  we  see  both 
ours  and  theirs." 

"They  are  not  having  an  easy  time.  Their  un- 
employed  " 


292  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"We  have  our  own  unemployed,  as  well  as  our  own 
dead." 

"Yes,  but  yours — why,  compared  to  theirs,  your 
unemployed  are  a  handful.  Theirs  run  to  the  million, 
and  yours  not  even  to  the  hundred  thousand. ' ' 

"I  wonder  if  you  think  us  French  a  little — 
Chinese  ?" 

"Since  you  have  said  it — may  I  agree?  Perhaps 
you  will  not  think  it  quite  such  bad  manners  when  I 
add  that  we  Americans  are  also  somewhat  Chinese, 
and  that  I  fancy  every  nation  has  always  been  so, 
either  moderately  or  excessively;  but  I  find  only  two 
great  nations  worse  than  the  French,  Germany — and 
the  Chinese!" 

She  laughed. 

"I  think  that  England  is  the  least  Chinese  of  us 
all,"  I  ventured  to  add. 

Her  laughing  stopped.  "One  sees  well  that  after 
all  you  are  pro-English." 

"My  dear  lady,  in  London  they  called  me  pro- 
French,  and  two  years  ago  our  soldiers  eyed  me 
askance  because  I  insisted  in  speaking  well  of  you  to 
them.  They  were  inclined  to  suspect  that  I  was  pro- 
everything  except  pro-American.  Sometimes  I  feel 
that  the  north  pole  must  be  the  only  agreeable  place 
left  in  the  world  because  nobody  lives  there.  Now,  at 
the  risk  of  your  displeasure,  I  repeat,  that  to  every 
unemployed  Frenchman  England  has  about  four  hun- 
dred, and  that  compared  to  their  need  to  sell  their 
wares,  yours  is  almost  negligible. ' ' 

After  a  short  silence,  "do  you  think,"  she  asked, 
1 '  that  if  it  was  their  Birmingham,  their  Leeds,  their 
Sheffield,  their  Canterbury  Cathedral,  that  were  in 
ruins,  and  their  wives  and  daughters  who  had  been 


OLD   ACQUAINTANCE  293 

deported  and  debauched,  they  would  enjoy  hearing  us 
ask  them  to  excuse  Germany's  debt?" 

I  could  only  meet  it  by  saying,  "Do  you  ever  think 
that  what  you  French  lost  more  than  a  hundred  years 
ago  and  have  adjusted  yourselves  to,  England  lost  all 
in  a  moment  in  this  war? — At  Mons  in  1914,  at  the 
Somme  in  1916 — the  whole  flower  of  her  race, 
madame,  her  youth,  her  promise,  the  fit  lovers  for  her 
fittest  maidens,  the  fine-tempered  steel  of  her  future 
strength  in  peace  or  war,  all  in  a  moment,  madame, 
burned  off  the  face  of  her  world  like  a  beautiful 
forest." 

Perhaps  it  made  her  think  of  some  of  her  own  dead, 
for  she  flung  up  her  hands. 

"Ah,"  she  exclaimed,  "the  horror  of  it  all!" 

"Horror  indeed!" 

More  than  once,  that  chill  returned  which  had  shot 
through  me  as  I  went  along  the  street  in  Amiens  in 
April  1919,  and  I  asked  myself  again  the  same  ques- 
tion that  I  had  put  then — were  the  signs  of  life  around 
me  true  stirrings  of  convalescence,  or  the  last  me- 
chanical gestures  of  a  man  who  does  not  know  that  he 
has  been  killed  1 

I  recall  another  talk,  in  Paris  this  time,  and  with 
an  American.  He  had  prophesied  the  war  in  a  book 
entitled  "Problems  of  Power,"  which  Roosevelt  ad- 
vised all  Americans  to  read,  if  they  wished  to  under- 
stand Europe.  Most  Americans  have  no  such  desire. 
His  sagacity  and  knowledge  are  better  appreciated 
in  Europe  than  in  his  own  country;  and  as  he  con- 
tinued to  unfold  and  discuss  one  depth  after  another 
of  the  world's  desperate  plight,  it  seemed  almost  as 
if  the  lights  grew  dim. 

'What  you're  saying,  if  it's  true,"  I  remarked,  for 


«c 


294  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

my  pilgrimage  was  still  near  its  beginning  and  my 
eyes  not  yet  half  open,  "is  that  you  and  I,  sitting  here 
at  this  table,  are  living  in  the  presence  of  a  tragedy 
that  beats  iEschylus  and  Sophocles  and  Hamlet  and 
Lear  and  Othello  and  every  worst  thing  in  history 
that  we  can  think  of,  all  rolled  into  one." 
"I  think  so." 

"You  might  almost  imagine,"  I  continued,  "that 
malignant  gods  had  sat  above  the  world,  up  in  some 
hell,  and  deliberately  thwarted  by  black  magic  every 
human  effort  to  save  us  from  this,  and  deliberately 
helped  every  blunder  and  ignorance  and  vanity  that 
would  plunge  us  deeper  into  it." 

"Yes,  it  tempts  one  to  that  superstition." 
"And  here  sit  you  and  I,  enjoying  a  good  dinner !" 
"Would   it   noticeably   help   matters   if   we    ab- 
stained?" he  inquired;  "the  milk  is  spilled." 


XXIV 


OVER     THE     SPILLED     MILK 


The  reader  will  recognize  almost  every  fact  in  this 
chapter,  of  which  not  a  word  would  need  to  be  writ- 
ten, were  our  memories  more  retentive  and  coherent. 
History  sweeps  through  each  day  in  a  pouring  spring 
flood,  and  on  its  surface  events  come  whirling  by  like 
the  leaves  of  a  torn  book.  We  see  each  leaf,  it  rushes 
on,  the  next  follows;  none  are  put  together  in  our 
brains,  and  so  the  import  of  what  is  a  continuous 
story  and  a  significant  warning  sweeps  by  us  in  un- 
comprehended  fragments. 

In  March  1918,  Germany  showed  what  she  thought 
of  the  fourteen  points  set  forth  by  Mr.  Wilson  as  a 
basis  of  peace.  She  launched  an  attack  upon  the  5th 
British  Army  which  came  within  a  hair's  breadth  of 
taking  Amiens,  of  cutting  apart  the  British  and 
French,  and  of  winning  the  war;  she  continued  to 
launch  attacks  until  she  saw  that  the  jig  was  up.  We 
knew  what  her  peace  terms  were  to  be,  did  she  win. 
These  were  not  at  all  like  the  fourteen  points ;  those 
were  a  repudiation  of  the  spoils  system  between  vic- 
tor and  vanquished  in  war;  by  Germany's  terms  her 
whole  war  bill  was  to  be  paid  and  whole  countries 
were  to  be  annexed. 

Not  quite  five  months  later,  Ludendorff  perceived 
that  Germany  had  failed  and  must  ask  for  an  armis- 
tice.    His  opinion  gradually  prevailed  in  his  country. 

295 


296  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFOETH 

One  does  not  see  what  right  Germany  in  her  hour  of 
failure  had  to  peace  terms  which  she  had  not  accepted 
in  the  hour  of  success.  It  is  as  if  the  owner  of  a  race 
horse  had  rejected  an  offer  of  twenty  thousand 
dollars  for  the  animal,  and  then  after  it  went  lame, 
stipulated  for  the  same  price.  Germany  was  encour- 
aged to  do  this  by  the  letters  which  Mr.  Wilson  wrote 
to  Max  of  Baden  without  consulting  the  Allies,  who 
at  that  time  were  driving  the  German  Army  out  of 
France  from  the  Channel  to  the  Vosges.  One  can  see 
that  American  prestige,  our  help  that  saved  the  day, 
led  to  the  fourteen  points  being  accepted  "in  prin- 
ciple" by  the  Allies  as  a  basis  of  peace;  at  such  a 
moment,  whatever  the  Allies  might  think,  they  could 
not  ignore  the  apparent  spokesman  and  actual  symbol 
of  the  United  States. 

Through  October  1918  the  speed  of  our  success 
heightened  until  it  became  what  General  Mangin  has 
called  it,  a  flight  to  victory;  and  during  these  days 
Foch  was  turning  over  in  his  mind  the  terms  of  the 
Armistice.  In  meditating  what  terms  should  be 
exacted,  he  said  one  day : 

' '  They  have  fought  bravely.  They  shall  keep  their 
arms." 

It  was  the  word  of  a  gallant  soldier,  it  was  a  chival- 
rous gesture  to  heart-sick  thousands  who  had  bled  in 
the  German  cause,  and  whose  fault  the  Prussian 
crime  certainly  was  not.  Grant  at  Appomattox  did 
the  same  to  Lee,  and  his  act  and  Lee 's  equally  gener- 
ous response  to  it  have  set  both  men  on  a  high  pin- 
nacle in  history;  but  Prussia  does  not  resemble 
Robert  E.  Lee. 

General  Bliss,  our  member  of  the  Supreme  War 
Council,  was  of  a  mind  different  from  Foch.     On  the 


OVER   THE    SPILLED   MILK  297 

28th  of  October  lie  offered  an  addition  to  the  terms  of 
the  Armistice,  of  which  the  following  is  a  translation 
of  one  paragraph : 

"  First,  the  Associated  Powers  exact  complete  dis- 
armament and  demobilization  of  the  enemy  on  land 
and  sea,  leaving  only  a  home  force  deemed  sufficient 
by  the  Associated  Powers  for  the  maintenance  of 
order  within  the  enemy's  country.  This  of  itself 
means  the  evacuation  of  all  invaded  territory  and  its 
evacuation  without  arms,  not  by  soldiers  armed  or 
partially  armed. ' ' 

On  the  ground  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  carry 
out,  Foch  had  already  rejected  a  similar  proposal 
made  to  him  by  M.  Clemenceau,  and  probably  for  this 
reason  the  suggestion  of  General  Bliss  was  not  sent 
to  him. 

Ignorant  of  these  important  links  in  the  chain,  I 
had  constantly  inquired,  first  in  England  and  then  in 
France : 

"Why  was  the  German  Army  allowed  to  go  home 
with  its  arms  and  banners  ? ' ' 

1 '  Oh,  one  didn  't  want  to  humiliate  them  too  much ! ' ' 

This  was  the  answer  of  a  distinguished  British 
general. 

"But  do  they  seem  to  have  appreciated  such  mag- 
nanimity?" 

He  admitted  that  they  had  not. 

When  I  asked  the  same  question  in  Paris,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  government  replied : 

"Foch  never  dreamed  that  the  Armistice  would 
not  be  soon  followed  by  a  peace  treaty,  signed  in 
Berlin  with  the  allied  armies  standing  at  attention, 
and  the  German  people  looking  on. ' ' 

I  must  have  asked  six  or  seven  Frenchmen  about  it, 


298  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

and  perhaps  what  one  elderly  and  seasoned  diplomat 
answered  sums  it  up : 

"Foch  spoke  like  a  soldier."  And  then,  after  a 
pause,  he  added  with  a  gentle  smile:  "but  it  is  a 
pity." 

A  clue  to  what  Foch  had  begun  to  think  by  March 
1919,  with  four  months  gone  since  the  Armistice  and 
no  treaty  in  sight,  has  been  dexterously  pulled  out  of 
the  tangle  by  Mr.  Fullerton,  the  author  of  "Problems 
of  Power. ' '  Speaking  at  a  public  dinner,  the  marshal 
had  said:  "An  armistice  is  the  equivalent  of  a  capitu- 
lation." When  his  speech  appeared  in  print,  he  had 
made  one  change:  "An  armistice  is  merely  a  capitu- 
lation." Mr.  Fullerton  adds  that  although  Foch  did 
accept  the  Armistice,  it  was  in  the  faith  that  state- 
craft was  not  extinct.  The  reader  will  find  translated 
in  Appendix  B,  the  strange,  sad  interview  given  by 
Foch  on  November  8th,  1920. 

We  have  the  word  of  Col.  House  (Public  Ledger, 
Philadelphia,  July  12th,  1920)  that  a  plan  for  peace 
at  once  had  followed  straight  upon  the  Armistice ;  a 
preliminary  treaty  to  be  signed  by  Christmas,  cover- 
ing broadly  the  army,  the  navy,  reparation,  and 
frontiers ;  and  that  this  would  have  been  the  natural 
step  to  take  while  all  the  Allied  armies  were  confront- 
ing Germany,  full  of  fight  and  elated  with  victory. 

Then  why  was  this  step  not  taken?  Terror  filled 
the  German  generals  during  these  October-November 
weeks :  one  of  them  cried  out  frankly  to  his  colleagues 
that  their  army  was  demoralized,  incapable  any 
longer  to  stave  the  Allies  off,  and  that  if  a  halt  were 
not  called  they  would  be  soon  in  Cologne.  These 
generals  were  too  elderly,  too  unstrung,  so  they  them- 
selves declared,  to  meet  Foch,  and  so  Erzberger  was 


OVER   THE    SPILLED   MILK  299 

sent  in  their  stead.  Later,  as  we  know,  he  ceased  to 
be  Prussian  enough  for  the  Junkers,  and  they  assas- 
sinated him. 

But,  if  it  was  the  natural  step,  why  no  treaty  by 
Christmas  f 

During  the  October  week  when  Foch  was  pondering 
the  Armistice,  I  was  staying  at  Sagamore  Hill ;  and, 
"Can  you  explain,"  I  asked  Mr.  Roosevelt  one 
day,  "Mr.  Wilson's  writing  notes  to  Germany  over 
the  heads  of  the  Allies  when  Germany  is  in  full 
retreat?" 

"Don't  you  see?"  he  said.  "This  war  may  last 
until  spring,  or  it  may  finish  any  day ;  and  Mr.  Wilson 
intends  to  go  over  and  sit  at  the  peace  table  and  be  the 
first  president  of  the  League  of  Nations.  He  is  writ- 
ing these  notes  to  prepare  for  that." 

It  was  not  then  known  so  generally  as  it  is  now 
that  the  idea  of  being  world  mediator  had  been  pres- 
ent in  Mr.  Wilson's  mind  since  1916.  Mr.  Roosevelt 
probably  guessed  it  from  the  readiness  to  offer 
Europe  the  benefits  of  his  mediation  which  Mr. 
Wilson  had  already  displayed. 

Whatever  we  may  forget,  all  of  us  remember 
Armistice  Day.  Our  cities  danced  in  their  streets, 
scraps  of  paper  fluttered  down  like  golden  snow  in 
the  sun  from  twenty  stories  of  windows  to  the  pave- 
ment, bands  and  leaping  processions  came  round 
corners,  a  belt  of  steam  whistles  blew  among  the 
suburbs  that  encircled  our  industrial  centres.  In 
Paris  our  doughboys  rushed  along  in  camions,  whirl- 
ing girls  from  the  sidewalk  up  into  their  arms.  Lon- 
don became  a  wilderness  of  joy,  relief  made  us  ready 
for  the  new  heaven  and  new  earth  which  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  later  promised  us  J  we  were  with  him  when  he 


300  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

said  in  December  that  Germany  must  pay  to  the  last 
cent  for  the  wrong  she  had  done,  and  again  when  he 
said  that  the  Kaiser  must  be  tried  at  Westminster. 

Just  before  all  this  rejoicing,  we  had  held  an  elec- 
tion. Mr.  Wilson  had  requested  us  to  vote  only  for 
Democrats,  as  he  needed  Democrats  to  support  his 
policies.  It  was  remembered  that  upon  the  day  he 
gave  his  war  message  to  Congress,  the  leader  of  the 
Republicans  had  tendered  him  that  party's  cordial 
and  total  help  in  carrying  on  the  war,  and  it  was  also 
remembered  that  numerous  Democrats  in  both  the 
House  and  Senate  had  voted  against  measures  of 
defence  and  preparation  offered  by  Republicans. 
Mr.  Wilson's  request  did  not  have  a  happy  effect 
upon  the  country,  and  was  disregarded  at  the  elec- 
tions; but  this  failed  to  reach  the  general  mind  of 
England  and  France. 

No  treaty  was  signed  by  Christmas,  but  Mr.  Wil- 
son sailed  for  Europe,  as  Mr.  Roosevelt  had  pre- 
dicted. A  group  of  senators,  by  no  means  negligible 
in  number,  somewhat  formally  sounded  a  note  of 
warning  that  they  would  not  accept  certain  provisions 
if  these  appeared  in  any  draft  of  a  League  of  Nations. 
The  rumor  will  not  quite  die  that  this  and  other  later 
and  important  news  was  prevented  from  crossing  the 
ocean  both  east  and  west.  I  know  that  the  result  of 
our  November  election,  and  the  warning  of  the  sena- 
tors, and  the  fact  that  Mr.  Wilson  did  not  represent 
the  unanimous  opinion  of  our  country,  came  to  public 
attention  in  Paris  through  a  series  of  articles  by  M. 
Cheradame  in  La  Democratic  Nouvelle.  How  much 
impression  these  made  I  can  not  say.  But  it  is  plain 
that  no  matter  what  was  known  in  England  and 
France,  they  could  hardly  ask  the  President  of  the 


OVER   THE   SPILLED   MILK  301 

United  States  for  his  credentials;  as  the  editor  of 
Punch  put  it  to  me  in  London : 

1  *  We  had  to  behave. ' ' 

So  did  we.  How  were  Americans  to  repudiate 
their  own  President,  and  even  had  they  wished  to  do 
so,  by  what  means  could  it  have  been  done?  Such  a 
thing  as  an  American  President  twice  in  two  months 
sailing  three  thousand  miles  away  from  his  desk,  and 
staying  away  four  months  the  second  time,  was  some- 
thing new ;  but  the  cause  was  new.  Americans  looked 
on  with  various  opinions,  and  hoped  for  the  best. 

Early  in  1919,  Mr.  Wilson  returned  from  his  first 
absence,  and  during  his  brief  stay  here  he  spoke  about 
the  League  of  Nations  in  glowing  general  terms,  but 
without  making  clear  its  concrete  significance  for  us, 
or  answering  the  specific  doubts  of  the  dissenting 
senators,  except  by  somewhat  sAveeping  denunciation 
and  one  threat.  He  would  weave  the  Peace  and  the 
League,  he  said,  so  completely  together  that  they 
could  not  be  severed.  This  was  his  parting  word, 
he  sailed  the  next  day ;  and  I  think  it  may  be  safely 
assumed  that  what  he  counted  on  was  not  so  much 
European  ignorance  about  the  November  election  or 
the  American  Constitution  as  that  the  Senate,  when 
he  should  press  against  its  head  a  treaty  signed  by 
England,  France,  and  Italy,  would  not  dare  to  break 
the  heart  of  the  world  (as  he  phrased  it  later)  by 
refusing  to  go  along  with  him.  His  miscalculation 
involved  us  all  in  European  displeasure  for  a  while ; 
even  two  years  later  I  met  the  lingering  resentment. 

"Does  your  country  always  change  its  opinions  so 
easily!"  " 

"I  am  not  quite  sure  that  I  follow  you." 

"Your  President  demanded  a  League  of  Nations. 


302  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"We  bowed  to  his  pleasure — and  failed  to  please 
you." 

"Do  your  public  men  always  represent  the  whole 
of  your  public  opinion  1    Allow  me  to  felicitate  you. ' ' 

"We  express  our  dissent." 

"We  expressed  ours  in  the  election  before  Mr. 
Wilson  went  to  you." 

"Ah  yes,  your  elections !  But  you  have  so  many  and 
they  are  so  far  away.    We  do  not  understand  them." 

"Quite  evidently  you  misunderstood  that  one. 
But  there  was  something  less  recent.  By  our  Con- 
stitution treaties  are  to  be  made  by  the  President 
with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate.  Our  Con- 
stitution has  been  in  print  a  hundred  years." 

"We  know  so  little  about  your  institutions." 

' '  That  is  equally  evident.  But  I  have  never  heard 
that  ignorance  of  the  law  constitutes  any  defence  in 
either  civil  or  criminal  cases." 

Of  such  conversations  I  held  a  number,  sometimes 
less  sharply  edged,  but  once  or  twice  more  so,  when  I 
found  myself  adding : 

"You  have  always  shown  such  a  sincere  interest 
in  our  dollars,  and  lately  so  much  in  our  military  aid 
in  case  of  further  unprovoked  assault  from  Ger- 
many, that  I  wonder  if  it  would  not  be  well  for  you  to 
turn  your  attention  to  some  aspect  of  us  less  directly 
useful  to  you?" 

I  had  to  shade  my  replies  according  to  the  shade 
of  civility  meted  to  me  on  each  occasion,  and  I  was 
always  glad  when  the  talk  ended  amicably,  and  never 
sorry  when  it  did  not.  It  was  every  American 's  duty 
to  set  his  country  straight,  after  the  miscalculation  of 
Mr.  Wilson. 

No  man 's  landing  on  a  foreign  shore  was  ever  like 


OVER    THE    SPILLED    MILK  303 

Mr.  Wilson's  first  coming  to  Europe.  That  had  been 
awaited  like  an  almost  miraculous  event.  The  people, 
the  simple  rustic  people,  broken  in  heart  and  fortune, 
thirsty  for  some  ideal,  longing  for  some  touch  that 
should  lift  them  from  despair,  stretched  out  their 
hands  to  him.  They  had  read  his  words  and  they 
passionately  believed  that  he  was  bringing  to  them  a 
gospel  of  balm  which  should  heal  their  world.  His 
picture  hung  on  the  walls  of  expectant  thousands. 
Even  their  more  sophisticated  leaders,  with  whom  he 
had  said  that  he  was  going  to  match  his  mind,  sup- 
posed that  a  matured  plan  lay  behind  the  vision  which 
he  had  belatedly  borrowed  from  the  League  to  En- 
force Peace,  and  that  it  was  not  all  mere  lofty  words. 
His  first  landing  was  in  December.  When,  after  half 
a  year,  he  started  home  the  second  time,  his  picture 
was  gone  from  the  walls,  and  Europe's  moment  of 
idealism  had  passed  into  cynical  laughter.  The  re- 
coil was  also  like  nothing  that  history  had  ever  seen. 
Mr.  Wilson  had  matched  his  mind  with  his  colleagues ' 
— and  the  wave  upon  which  he  had  ridden  first  to 
Europe 's  shores  had  ebbed  as  far  below  the  level  of 
justice  to  him  as  it  had  previously  surged  above  it. 
He  had  come  to  the  conference  with  a  noble  idea — the 
only  man  who  so  came,  and  he  came  asking  for  noth- 
ing— the  only  man  again.    What  had  happened  ? 

Because  of  his  letters  to  Max  of  Baden,  Germany, 
who  had  no  moral  right  to  his  fourteen  points,  trusted 
that  these  would  yet  save  her  skin ;  upon  these  same 
points  each  country  based  various  hopes  of  peace  and 
prosperity.     All  were  disenchanted  soon  or  late. 

One  point  of  the  fourteen,  the  freedom  of  the  seas, 
had  gone  early  in  the  game — for  game  it  turned  out 
to  be,  every  one  for  himself,  and  Mr.  Wilson  no  match 


304  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

for  any  of  them.  To  keep  his  League  of  Nations 
afloat  he  flung  overboard  all  his  other  points: 
Shantung  went  to  Japan;  open  covenants  were  not 
openly  arrived  at — they  can  not  be,  they  can  only  be 
adopted  openly — but  when  one  day  it  leaked  out  that 
Mr.  Wilson  was  dealing  openly  with  one  set  of  Rus- 
sian delegates,  while  he  was  privately  dealing  with 
their  antagonists,  a  large  piece  of  popular  faith  in 
him  cracked  off.  Self-determination  was  enforced 
where  it  was  not  wanted,  denied  where  it  should  have 
been  in  all  fairness  applicable;  Italy,  Hungary, 
Austria  were  alike  aggrieved,  the  confidence  of 
friends  and  foes  was  equally  destroyed.  Germany 
found  that  through  a  trick  at  the  eleventh  hour,  and 
in  spite  of  the  unanimous  opposition  of  the  American 
experts,  Mr.  Wilson  had  consented  that  her  repara- 
tions include  pensions  for  injured  French  soldiers 
as  well  as  damages  to  French  civilians.  For  this  and 
the  taking  of  her  colonies  Germany  fell  away  from 
him.  An  early  and  deepening  chill  had  cooled  French 
enthusiasm;  day  after  day  he  put  off  his  visit  to 
the  devastated  regions.  The  French  had  expected 
him  to  go  at  once,  and  see  with  his  own  eyes  what 
they  had  suffered. 

"Is  he  going  this  morning?" 

"Didn't  he  go  today?" 

"Isn't  he  going  tomorrow?" 

These  questions  were  asked  all  over  France  each 
day  after  his  arrival;  and  his  explanation  that  he 
feared  such  a  sight  might  prejudice  him  too  much 
against  Germany  did  not  help  to  keep  him  warm 
in  the  popular  affections,  any  more  than  did  his 
gaiety  at  lunch  in  Soissons  on  the  one  day  when 
he  did  finally  visit  the  ruins.    This  disappointment 


OVER    THE    SPILLED    MILK  305 

to  the  French  heart  changed  to  a  more  active  senti- 
ment when  it  turned  out  in  later  days  that  his  prom- 
ise of  future  military  aid  was,  without  senatorial 
endorsement,  void.  It  was  after  this  that  his  name 
one  night  was  painted  out  by  unknown  hands  on  the 
signs  along  the  avenue  that  bears  it. 

In  various  books  and  in  many  discussions,  the 
weight  of  blame  for  the  treaty's  shortcomings  has 
been  laid  upon  this  or  that  particular  pair  of  shoul- 
ders among  ' '  The  Big  Four ' ' ; — they  were  more  often 
the  Big  Three,  if  Signor  Orlando  took  as  little  part 
in  the  other  discussions  as  he  did  in  those  concern- 
ing Upper  Silesia,  which  are  given  in  Appendix  A. 
This  way  of  fixing  the  responsibility  is  not  borne  out 
by  such  facts  as  one  can  learn;  good  and  bad  were 
alike  the  collaboration  of  all,  because  all  in  the  end 
accepted  or  rejected  the  wishes  of  any  one;  Mr. 
Wilson  happens  to  have  suffered  from  a  heavier 
popular  reaction  because  higher  popular  hopes  were 
set  upon  him — and,  to  my  thinking,  his  own  con- 
tribution remains  the  finest  in  idea.  Unluckily,  to 
gain  its  adoption  he  assented  to  many  less  admirable 
provisions. 

The  British  Prime  Minister's  lack  of  plan  seems 
due  to  the  financial  and  labor  powers  behind  him 
at  home;  his  zigzag  moods  too  much  resembled  the 
gestures  of  something  jerked  by  strings  with  no 
mind  of  its  own,  and  they  brought  upon  him  that 
caustic  comment  of  M.  Clemenceau,  that  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  thought  only  in  terms  of  parliamentary  ma- 
jorities. Like  many  democratic  leaders  he  was 
unsteadied  by  the  eternal  jar  between  domestic  and 
foreign  policy.  Very  late  indeed  in  the  deliberations 
of  the  Big  Three,  he  returned  one  morning  from 


306  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

one  of  his  swift  visits  to  London,  and  proceeded  to 
insist  upon  the  uprooting  and  reversal  of  so  much 
which  had  been  settled,  that  silence  fell  around  him. 
Mr.  Wilson  was  described  to  me  as  leaning  his  dea- 
con's head  against  the  back  of  his  chair  and  gazing 
immovably  at  the  ceiling,  while  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
harangued  with  increasing  energy.  When  after  some 
fifteen  minutes  he  came  to  a  stop,  Mr.  Wilson  uttered 
four  words : 

"You  make  me  sick." 

If  the  Upper  Silesia  conversations  are  a  fair 
sample  of  the  rest,  it  is  evident  that  M.  Clemenceau 
was  far  clearer  sighted  and  much  better  acquainted 
with  Europe  than  either  of  his  colleagues,  and  he 
seems  to  me  to  have  risen  nearest  to  the  level  of 
statesmanship ;  but  he  had  too  much  inlook,  too  little 
outlook,  saw  France  as  a  horse  in  blinders  sees  the 
road  ahead  of  him  and  nothing  each  side  of  it;  on 
that  road  was  Germany  to  be  got  out  of  the  way, 
no  matter  what  else  happened.  He  did  not  discern 
that  right  and  left  loomed  a  menace  to  everybody, 
more  imminent  than  the  German  danger  to  France. 
None  of  them  seemed  sufficiently  to  have  perceived 
and  guarded  against  this;  they  were  blind  to  the 
economical  prospect,  they  saw  the  political  only,  they 
failed  to  recognize  that  henceforth  commercial  and 
financial  team-work  between  all  nations  could  alone 
repair  the  destruction  already  wrought,  and  make 
safe  the  bread  and  the  money  of  the  world ;  that  what- 
ever image  and  superscription  a  coin  may  bear, 
whether  it  be  Caesar's  or  the  American  eagle's,  hu- 
manity has  in  the  end  a  purse  in  common.  This  is 
clearer  to  many  today  than  it  was  then,  but  warn- 
ings were  not  wanting — for  instance,  that  of  Garvin, 


OVER   THE    SPILLED   MILK  307 

editor  of  the  London  Observer,  in  his  book  on  what 
ought  to  be  the  economic  foundations  of  the  peace. 
In  a  word,  Foch  the  soldier  did  a  clean  job  in  the 
fall,  and  in  the  following  spring  the  politicians — 
did  not.  Mortals  could  not  have  dealt  successfully 
with  a  task  so  monstrous;  the  blunder  was  not  to 
have  set  themselves  a  simpler  one. 

And  Germany?  What  of  her  during  the  fatal  and 
precious  months  between  the  Armistice  and  the  com- 
pletion of  the  treaty? 

On  November  11th,  1918,  Foch  had  beaten  her 
to  her  knees;  she  was  in  deadly  fear,  abject,  un- 
nerved; she  thought  the  Allies  would  be  in  Cologne 
within  a  few  days,  and  she  threw  up  her  hands  and 
cried  "Kamerad!" 

Not  such  was  her  attitude  on  that  May  7th,  1919, 
when  she  received  the  treaties  from  the  hands  of 
her  conquerors.  She  had  regained  something  more 
than  confidence.  Very  naturally  she  had  kept  her 
ears  and  eyes  open  while  the  Allies  delayed  and  dis- 
cussed. She  had  seen  no  peace  signed  in  Berlin 
by  Christmas ;  what  she  did  see  was  her  army  return- 
ing with  its  arms  and  its  banners;  what  she  heard 
was,  that  it  was  undefeated.  She  erected  arches, 
she  strewed  flowers,  she  played  triumphant  music 
for  this  undefeated  army.  She  got  up  from  her 
knees  and  listened,  and  looked  all  the  harder.  She 
saw  the  sailings  back  and  forth  of  Mr.  Wilson,  she 
saw  Signor  Orlando  rush  away  from  the  confer- 
ence to  Rome  in  a  rage  over  Fiume ;  a  hundred  signs 
during  those  weeks  showed  her  that  her  recent  ene- 
mies who  had  stood  together  and  so  defeated  her 
were  now  falling  apart ;  and  her  despair  changed  to 
hope.     Who  can  say  how  much  of  the  increasing 


308  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

gossip  and  cynicism  in  Paris,  as  the  conference 
wrangled  on  through  those  weeks,  did  not  reach  her 
attentive  ears  ?  She  must  have  heard  that  they  were 
" making  the  world  safe  for  Hypocrisy";  that  when 
Orlando  went  to  Rome,  the  French  had  struck  Italy's 
name  from  the  list  of  contracting  parties  in  a  docu- 
mentary preamble  to  the  treaty,  and  had  to  be 
persuaded  by  their  colleagues  to  re-insert  it  quickly 
in  ink,  lest  Orlando  return  and  discover  the  medi- 
tated slight,  and  deplorable  discords  ensue.  It  was 
told  at  dinners  in  Paris  that  one  of  the  army  of 
experts  gathered  there  had  been  reproached  by  an 
actress  for  rewarding  her  too  slightly  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  her  company. 

' 'My  nature  is  not  thought  stingy,"  he  replied. 
1 '  Only  this  morning  I  gave  a  whole  province  to  some 
people  I  have  never  seen." 

If,  in  April  1919,  I  could  hear  comments  like  this 
upon  the  lightness  with  which  the  old  nations  of 
Europe  were  being  sliced  and  repasted  into  new  ones, 
is  it  not  likely  that  the  acute  ears  of  Germany  heard 
much  more  than  did  my  innocent  American  ones? 

When  her  emissaries  came  to  Versailles  to  receive 
the  treaty,  she  had  been  up  from  her  knees  for  a 
long  while.  This  was  plainly  to  be  seen  by  their 
deportment  on  that  Wednesday,  May  7th,  1919.  On 
the  day  preceding,  at  the  brief,  stiff  ceremony  when 
these  delegates  presented  their  credentials  to  M. 
Cambon,  the  fewest  possible  words  had  been  spoken, 
and  nothing  was  to  be  observed  except  the  gait  of 
the  approaching  Germans  and  the  color  of  their  com- 
plexions. The  satisfactory  inference  drawn  from 
these  signs  was  dispersed  next  day  in  the  dining- 
room  of  the  Trianon  Palace  at  Versailles.    The  great 


OVER   THE    SPILLED   MILK  309 

ceremony  was  held  there,  all  the  council  present, 
splendid  sunshine  pouring  in  upon  the  room,  blos- 
soms on  the  fruit  trees  outside  in  the  garden.  _  The 
Allied  delegates  sat  waiting  amid  a  silent  swirl  of 
historic  association,  especially  the  memory  of  that 
18th  of  January,  1871,  when  Bismarck  the  conqueror 
sat  here  and  dictated  Germans  terms  to  the  French. 
The  door  opened,  a  voice  announced  the  German 
delegates,  the  council  rose.  The  Germans  walked  to 
their  chairs  and  sat  down  forthwith;  then,  noticing 
that  the  company  was  standing,  they  stood  for  a 
moment  and  reseated  themselves.  M.  Clemenceau, 
presiding,  said  a  few  words,  Brockdorff-Rantzau  was 
handed  the  text  of  the  treaty;  he  set  it  on  the  table, 
laid  his  gloves  on  it,  put  his  spectacles  on,  and  read 
in  German  a  lengthy  and  unexpected  address.  While 
the  interpreters  translated  each  passage  twice,  into 
English  and  into  French 

"Come  nearer!"  snapped  M.  Clemenceau,  "I  can't 
hear  you." 

The  address  went  on,  and  the  sad-eyed  Foch  sat 
there  with  his  colleagues,  present  against  his  will, 
because  he  thought  his  absence  would  show  the  enemy 
that  he  disagreed  about  the  terms  of  the  treaty.  He 
dissented  deeply  from  its  insecurities,  and  had  said 
so,  and  had  been  ignored.  He  looked  at  the  German's 
manner,  noticed  the  tone  of  his  voice,  and  heard  from 
him  that  the  German  people  had  gone  to  war  in  self- 
defence,  that  there  should  be  a  committee  of  neutrals 
to  examine  who  was  guilty;  this  and  more  he  with 
the  Allied  council  heard  said  by  the  seated  Brock- 
dorff-Rantzau  during  the  better  part  of  an  hour,  and 
then  the  ceremony  ended. 

"It  is  galling,"  said  Mr.  Lloyd  George  to  M.  An- 


310  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

dre  Tardieu  as  they  came  away,  "to  be  the  winner 
and  have  to  listen  to  such  words  as  those. " 

They  would  not  have  had  to  listen,  there  would 
have  been  no  such  words  if,  instead  of  dialogues, 
delays,  and  discords  for  six  months,  the  German 
Army  had  gone  home  without  its  flags  and  arms,  and 
the  German  nation  had  seen  a  treaty  signed  before 
Christmas  at  Berlin,  with  the  allied  armies  present. 
The  object  lesson,  the  fruit  of  victory,  the  chance 
of  peace,  all  was  missed  by  the  politicians  in  the 
spring  after  the  soldiers  had  done  a  clean  job  in  the 
fall. 

"Our  alliance,"  wrote  Pertinax  in  the  Echo  de 
Paris  next  morning,  "has  not  based  its  provisions  as 
prudence  should  have  dictated,  on  the  assumption  of 
the  worst,  on  the  possibility  of  a  Germany  that  may 
regain  its  strength  and  its  unity." 

A  German  in  Switzerland,  Carl  Rosemeier,  pub- 
lished on  that  same  morning  a  plainer  piece  of 
prophecy : 

"They  will  cheat  you  yet,  those  Junkers !  Having 
won  half  the  world  by  bloody  murder,  they  are  going 
to  win  the  other  half  with  tears  in  their  eyes,  crying 
for  mercy." 

A  verification  of  this  began  immediately ;  all  Ger- 
many at  once  set  up  an  outcry  over  the  treaty,  and 
this  served  its  end  during  the  days  between  May  7th 
and  that  June  day  when  the  treaty  was  signed.  Ap- 
parently, as  is  to  be  seen  in  the  conversations  about 
Upper  Silesia  which  occurred  in  this  period,  the 
outcry  alarmed  Mr.  Lloyd  George  more  than  it  did 
M.  Clemenceau  or  Mr.  Wilson.  They  do  not  seem 
to  have  been  afraid  that  the  Germans  would  refuse 
to  sign  the  treaty;  he  seems  to  have  been  so  nervous 


OVER   THE   SPILLED   MILK  3ll 

and  restless  about  this  that  he  proposed  softenings 
and  conciliations  with  which  his  colleagues  seldom 
agreed,  and  which  brought  one  day  that  remark  from 
Mr.  Wilson  as  he  leaned  his  head  back  in  his  chair. 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  carried  some  of  his  points — it  can 
never  be  known  whether  or  no  they  were  necessary 
— and  the  treaty  was  signed. 

"The  Germans  will  not  observe  the  most  equitable 
stipulations,"  remarked  M.  Clemenceau  on  that  day, 
" unless  they  feel  that  force  stands  behind  justice." 

That  was  in  June  1919,  and  in  May  1921,  a  Ger- 
man said  to  a  friend  of  mine : 

"As  an  American  this  will  not  interest  you;  but 
Germany  does  not  intend  to  pay  France,  and  France 
is  not  clever  enough  to  make  her.  Were  the  situa- 
tion reversed,  we  should  be  clever  enough  to  make 
France  pay." 

Equally  plain  talk  came  from  General  Ludendorff 
later  in  the  summer  of  1920.  In  addressing  the  stu- 
dents at  Koenigsberg,  he  referred  to  Upper  Silesia, 
and  said : 

"I  have  no  doubt  that  our  country's  destiny  will 
sooner  or  later  be  decided  by  a  battle  for  the  eastern 
region.  .  .  .  The  greater  our  country's  need,  the 
closer  shall  we  rally  round  the  Prussian  flag." 

No  blame  or  shame  attaches  to  him  for  that;  it 
is  the  word  of  a  man  true  to  his  country  and  his 
faith;  the  blame  falls  on  those  who  shut  their  eyes 
to  all  this. 

And  so,  seven  months  after  the  clean  job  of  Foch, 
the  peace  was  signed,  giving  us  Mr.  Lloyd  George's 
new  heaven  and  new  earth,  and  the  labors  of  the 
"Big  Three"  were  ended.  Upon  M.  Clemenceau 
fell  unjust  wrath;  the  jar  between  French  foreign 


312  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

and  domestic  policy  shook  him  from  public  into 
private  life.  He  deserved  better  from  his  people. 
Mr.  Wilson  came  home  bearing  the  treaty  like  a 
magic  talisman,  flawless,  to  be  accepted  just  so.  Ap- 
parently he  knew  about  nothing  it  contained  except 
his  League  of  Nations,  was  unaware  that  he  had 
helped  to  establish  a  spoils  system  in  the  teeth  of 
his  fourteen  points.  He  had  made  promises  alone 
which  two  were  needed  to  make,  and  wrath  fell  upon 
him  at  home  and  abroad.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  came 
off  best  at  home,  hardly  as  well  elsewhere.  Together, 
the  three  had  invaded  commercial  thoroughfares  as 
Germany  invaded  Belgium ;  had  shuffled  and  re-dealt 
frontiers  as  if  they  were  a  pack  of  cards ;  and  many 
of  their  arrangements  seem  as  if  they  had  supposed 
that  they  could  change  human  nature  with  a  drop 
of  ink.  The  new  heaven  and  new  earth  in  which  we 
are  living  is  their  work. 


XXV 

BY  THEIR  FRUITS 

When  Germany  threw  up  her  hands  and  cried 
"Kamerad!"  she  was  spared  having  that  done  to 
her  which  she  had  done  to  others;  not  one  blade  of 
her  grass  was  trodden  down,  not  one  invading  foot- 
step crossed  her  boundaries,  not  one  hair  of  her  head 
was  singed ;  but  her  conquerors  were  agreed  that  she 
must  make  good  the  havoc  she  had  wrought.  Then 
these  conquerors  failed  to  strike  while  the  iron  was 
hot.  They  doubled  the  error  of  a  premature  armis- 
tice by  a  belated  peace,  and  by  so  doing  handed  over 
their  victory  to  Germany ;  and  Foch,  who  had  deliv- 
ered the  goods,  saw  these  not  only  squandered  but 
never  paid  for.  To  the  tragedy  of  the  war  is  added 
this  sardonic  mockery  of  the  peace:  defeated  Ger- 
many, who  was  spared  invasion,  is  now  not  only  to 
be  pardoned  her  sentence  of  reparation,  her  con- 
querors must  also  stretch  out  united  hands  and  help 
to  lift  her  from  the  economic  collapse  which  she 
brought  upon  herself  by  her  assault  upon  them.  Our 
civilization  must  heal  Germany  or  perish  itself  by 
the  contagion  of  economic  pestilence.  To  some  men 
of  finance  there  seems  no  other  way  out. 

Does  any  literature  of  any  age  contain  a  drama 
parallel  to  this? — wherein  the  half -killed  victim  of 
an  enslaving  tyrant  in  order  to  save  his  own  life 
must  nurse  the  sick  tyrant  back  to  health,  knowing 

313 


314  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

all  the  while  that  once  the  tyrant  is  firm  on  his  legs 
he  will  try  the  same  trick  again!  Let  us  talk  and 
reason  moderately,  and  try  to  keep  our  heads  if 
we  can. 

The  opinion  of  these  financiers  would  weigh  more 
with  me  did  I  not  recall  their  prophecies  at  the  out- 
set of  the  war  and  during  its  course.  They  proved 
that  the  war  would  be  short,  because  no  nation  could 
go  on  paying  for  it ;  it  was  Kitchener,  a  soldier,  who 
said  that  it  would  last  three  years.  The  view  of  the 
financiers  looked  at  the  time  unanswerable  on  paper 
— I  confess  that  I  cannot  answer  their  present  view 
— on  paper ;  I  can  only  reflect  that  human  effort  con- 
tains surprises  which  upset  the  wisest  calculations, 
and  that  perhaps  there  is  more  life  in  us  and  in 
Mother  Earth  than  appears.  Nevertheless,  that  is  no 
warrant  for  a  blind  optimism  such  as  Americans 
love  to  indulge  in;  the  early  spoken  warning  of  Mr. 
Keynes  has  come  nearer  the  truth  than  the  new 
heaven  and  new  earth  promised  to  us  by  Mr.  Lloyd 
George,  and  the  United  States  can  no  more  turn  its 
back  on  the  illness  of  Europe  than  one  Siamese  twin 
can  ignore  his  brother's  jaundice.  We  shall  have 
to  do  something,  and  the  sooner  the  better,  but  not 
over-hastily.  Just  how  extinct  is  Germany,  just  how 
much  is  she  shamming  dead?  It  will  be  very  well 
indeed  to  keep  in  mind  the  warning  of  the  German, 
Carl  Rosemeier,  published  the  morning  after  the 
treaty  was  delivered  to  his  fellow-countrymen : 
"They  will  cheat  you  yet,  those  Junkers." 
Once  a  "Wall  Street  financier,  imprisoned  for  his 
misdeeds,  was  pardoned  by  President  Taft  upon  a 
doctor's  word  that  his  health  was  failing.  Upon 
being  set  free,  his  health  returned  immediately.    It 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  315 

is  well  known  that  women  often  have  sent  flowers 
and  refreshments  to  a  condemned  murderer,  but  be- 
stowed not  a  crumb  or  a  thought  upon  the  family 
of  the  victim.  Should  not  the  quality  of  mercy  be 
more  strained  than  this?  Too  many  people  today 
go  about  talking  of  the  hardships  of  Germany,  and 
quite  pass  over  the  hardships  of  France.  Many  of 
these  persons  wonder  if  the  fault  was  Germany's, 
or  are  sure  that  even  if  she  may  have  been  guilty, 
she  is  sorry  for  it  now.  If  they  are  asked  the  reason 
for  their  opinion,  they  fade  into  vague  generaliza- 
tions. Even  a  simple  question  to  the  point  has  been 
known  to  embarrass  a  financier ;  one  banker  who  had 
recently  returned  from  Germany  and  was  asserting 
that  she  had  no  money  wherewith  to  pay  her  repara- 
tion, was  asked  why  she  did  not  get  some  of  the 
millions  which  her  profiteers  were  investing  all  over 
the  world?    He  replied: 

"Oh,  that  is  another  story,"  and  proceeded  to 
enlarge  upon  how  hard  Germany  was  at  work. 

We  do  not  need  to  be  told  that.  War  has  not  made 
Germany  idle  or  inefficient.  The  superb  manner  in 
which  she  ran  her  administrative  machinery,  the  per- 
fect physical  training  of  her  body  politic  and  eco- 
nomic, put  all  other  nations  to  shame,  and  made  our 
own  municipal  and  State  and  Federal  Governments 
look  like  flabby  amateurs  beside  a  professional  ath- 
lete. We  could  do  nothing  better  than  imitate  her 
methods  in  political  housekeeping,  and  the  nearer 
we  came  to  them  the  better  off  in  health,  and  safety, 
and  order,  and  pocket  we  should  be;  but  what  we 
particularly  need  to  do  in  these  days  is  to  find  out 
how  inanimate  Germany  really  is,  to  watch  the  straws 
that  show  which  way  the  wind  blows,  to  judge  Jier 


316  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

by  what  she  has  done  and  is  doing:  "by  their  fruits 
ye  shall  know  them" — that  is  the  eternal  test. 

The  German  people  are  most  certainly  at  work, 
and  I  doubt  if  in  any  of  the  Allied  countries  a  list 
of  dividends  like  the  following  could  be  paralleled: 

First  year  Second 

after  the  year  after 

war  the  war 

per  cent.  per  cent. 

Bremen  Linoleum  Company 10  30 

Unger  and  Hoffman 15  15 

German  Rail  Transport 15  40 

German  Wool  Manufacturing 10  30 

Saxon  Cartonnage   171^  20 

Ottenser  Iron  Works 10  15 

Leipsig  Cotton   21  25 

Poppe  and  Wirth 20  30 

These  figures  were  published  in  the  Norwegian 
Courier  of  March  8th,  1921. 

For  the  third  year  since  the  war  the  dividends 
were  as  large  and  larger,  and  I  could  give  a  longer 
list  of  them,  but  the  above  seem  enough  for  my  point. 

Where  does  the  money  go?  Industrial  leaders  in 
Germany  are  known  to  have  on  deposit,  at  home  and 
abroad,  securities  worth  one  billion  dollars.  Ger- 
many taxes  her  people  $13.88  per  head,  in  France  it 
is  $45.22.  Bread  in  Germany  costs  three  and  a  half 
cents  a  kilogram,  in  France  eight  and  a  quarter. 
A  ten-ton  railway  car  can  be  transported  a  thousand 
kilometres  in  Germany  for  sixty  dollars,  it  costs 
nearly  one  hundred  and  eighty  in  France.  The  Ger- 
man foreign  debt  is  less  than  one  billion,  that  of 
France  more  than  ten  billion. 

It  seems  to  me  that  straws  like  these  show  which 


BY    THEIR   FRUITS  317 

way  the  wind  blows;  and  here  are  two  others  of  a 
different  sort: 

A  friend  of  mine,  lately  in  Germany,  looked  out 
of  his  window  at  the  Hotel  Bellevue  in  Dresden.  The 
Opera  House  stood  opposite  and  some  heavy  scenery 
was  being  brought  in  a  dray  and  unloaded.  Some 
five  or  six  men  lifted  ponderous  columns  and  steps 
of  temples  out  of  the  dray  and  into  the  Opera  House 
in  some  five  or  six  minutes.  These  men  did  not  make 
a  needless  movement  of  arm  or  leg,  it  was  all  a 
precise  piece  of  team-work  with  them,  and  their  job, 
performed  by  our  undrilled  American  methods,  would 
have  taken  at  least  half  an  hour. 

My  second  straw  is  an  instance  of  mental  and 
moral  drill.  This  same  friend  was  in  Berlin,  and 
was  being  shown  a  particular  quarter  where  the  mob 
of  the  brief  revolution  had  swept  through.  A  space 
of  lawn  lay  in  their  course,  and  my  friend  pointed 
to  the  rich  and  flourishing  grass. 

"No  revolution  ever  trod  on  that,"  he  said;  "that 
shows  years  of  care." 

"They  went  round  it,  naturally,"  said  his  German 
companion,  and  pointed  to  the  sign  "verboten." 

Drill  did  its  magic  work  when  our  soldiers  came 
to  occupy  Coblenz  and  its  neighborhood.  They  were 
not  well  received  during  the  first  hours  of  their  ar- 
rival; they  met  with  sullen  manners  and  scowling 
looks,  which  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at.  Had  I 
been  a  German  at  Coblenz,  I  should  not  have  felt 
like  greeting  the  American  Army  with  a  smile  and 
a  hand  outstretched.  The  next  morning,  all  was  dif- 
ferent at  Coblenz ;  it  was  welcome,  and  geniality,  and 
"What-can-I-do-for-you?  The  doughboy  did  not  re- 
flect deeply  over  this  agreeable  but  unnaturally  sud- 


318  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

den  change,  he  merely  began  to  like  the  Germans 
better  than  he  had  liked  the  French.  It  was  his 
officers  who  nsed  their  reason  and  discerned  that 
some  wise  observer  had  sent  word  to  Germany's 
control  office  of  the  rudeness  shown  the  new  arrivals, 
and  that  the  office  had  at  once  given  out  the  needful 
direction,  changing  German  manners  overnight. 

Many  accounts  of  Germany's  actual  political  state 
reach  us,  some  quite  plainly  meant  for  uncritical  and 
credulous  readers,  but  others  as  plainly  honest  and 
well  observed.  One  derives  from  these  latter  the 
impression  that  the  present  German  Government 
wishes  to  fulfil  its  obligations  to  France  and  the 
world — is,  in  a  word,  reasonable  and  well  disposed; 
but  that  it  is  weak,  that  the  true  power  lurks  behind 
and  is  in  the  hands  of  a  few  very  able  captains  of 
industry,  who  are  playing  chess  with  the  Reichstag 
and  all  other  pieces  on  the  board — pawns,  knights, 
bishops,  castles,  and  even  kings — for  their  own  bene- 
fit. What  is  their  own  benefit?  That  question  is 
answered  satisfactorily  by  no  one;  we  are  left  un- 
certain what  these  strong  and  resourceful  men,  who 
seem  to  be  the  real  rulers  of  Germany,  intend.  Are 
they  at  the  bottom  of  the  unrest  which  has  been 
playing  like  sheet  lightning  over  the  question  of 
Upper  Silesia?  Were  they  of  General  Ludendorff 's 
mind  when  he  told  the  college  students  of  Koenigs- 
berg  that  a  battle  would  some  day  settle  that  ques- 
tion, and  Prussia's  army  would  be  victorious  there 
through  the  same  drill  and  discipline  and  trust  in  its 
leaders  which  had  won  at  Tannenberg?  I  don't 
know;  but  when  I  meet  those  who  are  inclined  to 
release  the  prisoner  because  his  doctor  says  that  he 
is  dying,  or  who  are  sending  flowers  and  refresh- 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  319 

ments  to  the  outlaw  across  the  Rhine,  I  think  it  well 
to  remind  them  of  that  billion  dollars  invested  in 
foreign  securities,  of  those  dividends  paid  by  Ger- 
man corporations  since  the  war,  and  of  the  difference 
between  the  German  and  the  French  tax  rate. 
' 'They  will  cheat  you  yet,  those  Junkers." 
I  do  not  say  that  they  will,  I  do  not  know  that  they 
will  not ;  I  know  only  that  straws  show  which  way  the 
wind  blows. 

Returning  travellers  bring  word  of  the  shifting 
tides  in  Germany's  party  politics — which  currents 
are  flowing  strong  and  which  seem  to  be  weakening ; 
and  these  reports  do  not  always  match.  All  are 
interesting  and  none  seem  important,  because  they 
tell  of  what  goes  on  near  the  surface  and  not  of  the 
invisible  ground  swell,  at  which  one  can  only  guess. 
There  is  something  to  be  gathered  by  the  number  of 
seats  which  this  or  that  party  has  lost  or  gained  in 
the  Reichstag;  socialism  would  seem  on  the  whole 
to  be  on  the  wane,  with  a  tide  setting  toward  the 
return  to  traditional  institutions,  by  no  means  for- 
gotten, tenaciously  remembered,  increasingly  re- 
gretted. In  the  deep  woods  are  huts  upon  whose  walls 
the  royal  portraits  still  hang,  they  are  being  put  back 
upon  walls  from  which  they  were  removed  three 
years  ago;  it  is  against  the  law,  but  the  law  does 
not  seem  to  mind.  One  may  be  fairly  sure  that  when 
a  dreamy,  poetic,  and  long-memoried  people,  with 
a  strong  accumulation  of  legend  in  their  subcon- 
sciousness, have  gone  to  war,  and  drunk  their  beer, 
and  begotten  their  sons,  for  centuries  under  the  rule 
of  dukes  and  princes  and  kings,  serving  their  fami- 
lies, wearing  their  colors,  singing  their  songs,  danc- 
ing at  their  pageants,  dying  in  their  battles,  and  far- 


320  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

ing  all  the  while  as  well  as  their  neighbors,  that  the 
taste  for  their  old  leaders  will  die  hard  in  them,  and 
they  will  not  immediately  drop  it  all  and  turn  into 
a  self-governing  race  because  they  have  been  pre- 
scribed a  tablespoonful  of  democracy  three  times 
a  day  after  meals.  But  even  if  we  do  wake  up  some 
morning  far  or  near  to  see  a  throne  in  Germany  once 
more,  and  some  dynastic  family  from  Prussia,  or 
Bavaria,  or  elsewhere  seated  upon  it,  not  even  this 
seems  to  me  the  important  point  for  us:  it  is  not 
what  form  of  government  this  strong-souled  and 
persistent  people  may  keep  or  change  to,  it  is  what 
of  their  ambitions  will  survive  beneath  any  garb, 
what  they  are  going  to  do,  what  will  be  done  through 
them,  what  young  Germans  who  are  now  five,  ten,  or 
fifteen  years  old  are  being  taught — since  they  are  the 
Germany  of  tomorrow. 

Well,  some  of  this  is  known.  Old  Germans  are 
saying,  and  young  ones  are  believing,  that  in  1914 
the  Fatherland  was  obliged  to  fight  a  war  of  self- 
defence,  particularly  against  Russia;  Russia  had 
been  making  ready  to  attack  it  for  months.  One 
does  not  know  how  an  old  German  would  meet  such 
a  comment  as  this: 

"But  you  know  that  on  the  night  of  July  31st, 
1914,  when  Austria  was  showing  signs  of  drawing 
back  from  the  gulf  to  whose  edge  you  had  pushed 
her,  and  had  entered  into  amicable  conversation  with 
Russia,  you  cut  it  short  in  haste  and  declared  war 
upon  Russia  yourselves." 

I  can  not  say  how  this  would  be  met,  but  in  the 
Fatherland  it  does  not  have  to  be;  the  unfledged 
nestling  German  asks  no  questions,  he  opens  wide 
his  mind  and  what  he  is  to  know  is  dropped  into  it 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  321 

by  the  Prussian  parent  bird,  and  consequently,  when 
he  flies  from  the  nest,  it  is  with  a  string  from  Berlin 
tied  securely  to  his  brain.  Did  the  war  break  that 
string?  Hardly.  The  great  skill  in  the  devising 
and  instilling  of  lies  for  an  end,  by  which  Germany 
was  duped  and  directed  into  the  war,  is  not  at  all 
defunct.  It  does  not  invent  imaginary  bombs  at 
Nuremburg  any  more,  or  publish  Roosevelt's  con- 
gratulation to  the  Kaiser  on  his  victorious  entry  into 
Paris,  or  stamp  the  compressed  fuel-bricks  for 
locomotives  with  "Gott  strafe  England";  but  it  cir- 
culates almanacs  with  saint-like  images  of  the  Hohen- 
zollern  family  and  their  military  glories,  and  pious 
texts  beneath  them;  and  it  makes  toys  for  children, 
boxes  of  little  French  houses  and  churches,  and  little 
guns  with  which  to  knock  them  down  on  the  nursery 
floor.  Could  anything  be  more  natural,  more  excel- 
lent for  the  young  of  a  nation  that  had  a  great  preda- 
tory purpose  to  implant  in  its  people?  And  what 
people  has  ever  proved  by  temperament  more  polit- 
ically docile  than  the  Germans,  less  instinctively 
revolutionary,  better  adapted  to  receiving  impres- 
sions like  wax,  and  retaining  them  like  adamant? 
Their  subtle  educators  never  miss  a  trick.  On  the 
morrow  of  Mr.  Hughes'  proposal  for  disarmament, 
out  came  the  German  papers,  like  the  well-drilled 
chorus  that  they  are,  with  exclamations  about  "Yan- 
kee hypocrisy."  There  again  they  present  us  with 
a  straw  for  our  guidance:  the  word  "disarmament" 
is  to  be  associated  with  the  word  "hypocrisy,"  and 
thus  dropped  into  the  docile  German  mind.  It  mat- 
ters not  whose  the  mailed  fist  be  at  present ;  whether 
imperial  or  industrial,  it  is  there;  a  soft  glove  has 
been  drawn  over  it,  that  is  all — and  sometimes  there 


322  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

are  little  holes  in  the  glove  through  which  the  metal 
gleams. 

As  no  people  is  more  politically  docile  than  the 
Germans,  so  also  none  has  ever  run  more  true  to 
form.  Merely  as  a  revelation  of  the  changeless  per- 
sistence of  their  character,  it  is  deeply  interesting 
to  read  that,  in  the  first  century  after  Christ,  a 
Roman  general  named  Velleius  Paterculus  wrote  of 
them  that  they  were  "cunning  in  ferocity,  born  to 
lie" — to  read  this  and  to  remember  that  in  1914  at 
Fontenoy,  they  displayed  flags  of  truce,  and  when 
the  French  accepted  this  signal  in  good  faith  and 
walked  up  to  receive  the  surrender,  the  Germans 
killed  them ;  to  remember  that  in  1918  near  Cambrai, 
they  left  behind  them  as  they  retreated  that  live 
kitten  nailed  above  the  concealed  mine  which  killed 
the  British  soldiers  who  hurried  to  release  it  from 
its  torture. 

Equally  interesting  is  it  to  find  Tacitus  writing 
in  the  fourth  book  of  his  history: 

"There  will  always  be  similar  motives  to  excite 
the  Germans  to  invade  the  Gauls.  It  is  lust,  greed, 
the  desire  to  change  place,  to  quit  their  marshes 
and  solitudes,  to  seize  upon  a  fertile  soil  and  its 
inhabitants ' ' 

And  after  this  to  read  in  a  number  of  that  illus- 
trated family  paper  the  Gartenlaube,  published  in 
1874,  an  article  with  pictures  of  the  Marne  valley, 
by  a  German  who  had  walked  through  it,  and  who 
concludes : 

"Your  heart  bleeds  in  your  breast  to  think  that 
this  splendid  region  does  not  belong  to  Germany.' ' 

And  finally  to  read  the  remarks  of  two  Prussian 
generals,  von  Clausewitz  and  von  Schellendorft* : 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  323 

"Let  us  not  forget  the  task  of  civilization  which 
Providence  by  its  decrees  lays  upon  us.  As  Prussia 
was  by  destiny  the  kernel  of  Germany,  so  Germany 
regenerated  shall  be  the  kernel  of  the  future  empire 
of  the  West. 

' '  That  none  may  go  in  ignorance,  we  proclaim  that 
henceforth  our  continental  nation  has  a  right  not  to 
the  North  Sea  only,  but  also  to  the  Mediterranean  and 
Atlantic.  Consequently  we  shall  absorb,  one  after 
another,  all  provinces  which  border  on  Prussia;  we 
shall  annex  successively  Denmark,  Holland,  Belgium 
.  .  .  then  Trieste  and  Venice,  and  finally  the  northern 
part  of  France  from  the  Somme  to  the  Loire.' ' 

General  von  Schellendorff,  in  commenting  upon 
this  prospectus,  said: 

"The  style  of  old  Clausewitz  is  very  soft.  He  was 
a  poet  who  put  rose-water  in  his  inkstand.  Now  it 
is  with  blood  that  matters  of  war  should  be  written, 
and  the  next  war  will  be  atrocious ;  between  Germany 
and  France  nothing  but  a  duel  to  the  death  is  ade- 
quate. To  be  or  not  to  be,  that  is  the  question  which 
can  be  settled  only  by  the  ruin  of  one  of  these  antago- 
nists. 

"...  We  shall  annex  ...  the  north  of  France 
from  the  Somme  to  the  Loire.  This  program,  which 
we  announce  without  fear,  is  no  fool's  work;  this 
empire  which  we  intend  to  found  will  not  be  a  Utopia : 
we  have  in  hand  even  now  the  means  of  realizing 
it." 

In  nineteen  hundred  years,  the  marshes  and  soli- 
tudes across  the  Rhine  have  become  miracles  of 
fertility  and  comfort;  but  "the  greed,  the  desire  to 
change  place,  to  seize  upon  a  fertile  soil  and  its 
inhabitants,"  which  Tacitus  recorded,  we  too  have 


324  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

beheld;  and  in  thinking  it  over,  once  again  the  acute 
judgment  of  Heine  is  borne  out. 

''The  German  is  stupid,"  he  says;  "educate  him 
and  he  becomes  malignant." 

Prussia's  intensive  education  of  the  race  of  Luther 
and  Beethoven  has  made  it  the  race  which  bombarded 
the  cathedral  of  Reims  and  nailed  the  live  kitten  to 
the  door. 

Midway  in  the  long  chain  of  testimony  comes 
Dante,  with  his  word  about  the  Tedeschi  lurchi. 
This  poet  of  Latin  race  and  refinement  had  seen 
plenty  of  Germans  in  Italy,  and  his  word  lurchi, 
though  it  is  not  quite  easy  to  find  any  single  English 
adjective  which  expresses  it  perfectly,  is  exactly 
translated  by  the  use  to  which  the  piano  was  put  by 
the  German  officers  billeted  at  the  farm  where  we 
slept;  by  what  I  heard  about  the  daily  personal 
habits  of  the  interned  prisoners  at  Fort  Oglethorpe ; 
by  what  I  read  in  the  letters  of  the  orchestra  leader ; 
and  by  what  the  Germans  did  in  public  to  Belgium 
women — all  is  a  translation  of  Dante's  word  lurchi. 
It  does  not  mean  those  excesses  of  hot  blood  common 
to  all  warfare,  but  the  quality  which  showed  itself 
in  the  German  caricatures,  and  which  impelled  Ger- 
man officers,  after  living  months  in  a  French  house, 
to  defile  it  when  they  left.  It  is  perhaps  Tacitus 
rather  than  Dante  who  is  recalled  by  Bismarck's 
speech  concerning  the  indemnity  that  he  was  impos- 
ing in  1871: 

"If  France  does  not  meet  her  obligations,  we  will 
do  as  caterpillars  do  that  invade  a  tree.  We  will 
eat  her  leaf  by  leaf." 

It  was  Frederick  the  Great  who  said  that  he  first 
did  what  he  chose,  and  afterwards  could  always  find 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  325 

pedants  to  justify  it.  Did  he  inherit  this  from  the 
days  of  Dante?  As  any  rate  he  transmitted  the 
custom;  and  we  still  remember  that  manifesto  of 
the  ninety-three  professors  in  1914,  who  told  us 
under  their  ninety-three  signatures  the  truth  about 
the  Fatherland. 

"It  is  not  true,"  they  declared,  "that  Germany 
provoked  this  war." 

"It  is  not  true  that  we  criminally  violated  the  neu- 
trality of  Belgium."  Their  own  Chancellor  had  said 
the  contrary. 

One  understands  why  Schopenhauer  wrote  in  his 
memorabilia : 

"In  anticipation  of  my  death  I  make  this  confes- 
sion, that  I  despise  the  German  nation  on  account 
of  its  unlimited  stupidity,  and  I  blush  at  belonging 
to  it." 

The  ninety-three  did  not  stop  there;  they,  and 
others  to  what  number  I  know  not,  were  busy  through 
four  years,  justifying  the  acts  of  their  Kaiser  until 
he  ran  off  to  Holland — it  may  be  that  they  have  also 
justified  that;  but  they  produced  a  mass  of  pam- 
phlets and  addresses  proving  heavily  to  the  entire 
satisfaction  of  their  readers  the  righteousness  of  any 
number  of  things.  I  do  not  know  what  they  may  have 
had  to  say  about  such  incidents  as  this,  of  which 
there  were  a  great  many : 

From  the  diary  of  Private  Hassemer,  8th  corps, 
September  3,  1914,  at  Sommepy: 

"Horrible  carnage,  the  village  burned  and  razed 
to  the  ground,  the  French  driven  into  the  houses  in 
flames,  civilians  and  all  burned  together." 

I  have  read  in  the  writings  of  German  generals, 
that  work  like  this  is  done  in  order  to  discourage 


326  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

further  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  enemy,  and  so 
to  make  the  war  short:  one  of  the  objections  to  such 
policy  seems  to  be  that  it  did  not  achieve  its  pur- 
pose. Would  it  have  provided  Schopenhauer  with 
another  reason  for  blushing?  We  can  imagine  his 
cheeks  growing  hot  over  a  solemn  pamphlet  which 
proved  that  the  Meuse  country  was  Germany's  by 
historic  right,  since  Verdun  had  long  been  known  in 
Germany  as  Wirten,  showing  that  the  town  must 
have  had  a  German  origin.  The  trouble  about  this 
argument  is,  that  there  are  twelve  other  Verduns 
in  France,  six  of  which  are  in  the  south,  quite  be- 
yond the  inroads  of  all  Hun  invasion  from  Attila 
down. 

Strasbourg  was  full  of  printed  arguments  like  this, 
little  books,  little  lectures,  that  fell  into  the  hands  of 
the  Allies  after  the  Armistice.  They  form  a  library, 
and  they  draw  a  map  of  the  German  mind,  a  portrait 
of  the  German  spirit,  carefully,  by  its  own  hand,  not 
an  enemy's.  I  can  not  choke  this  chapter  with  one- 
half  or  one-tenth  of  these  touches  which  go  to  make 
the  portrait ;  three  or  four  must  suffice : 

What  us  the  World  War  bring  must,  is  the  excel- 
lent title  of  a  work  published  in  1914,  and  I  will  not 
disarrange  its  sequence  of  syllables.  It  seems  ad- 
dressed to  mothers,  but  to  mix  its  genders : 

1  i  Enough  of  the  twaddle  about  morality !  .  .  .  now 
is  the  moment  thou  noble  .  .  .  woman,  Germania 
...  to  suppress  manfully  such  moments  of  pity  .  .  . 
nations  at  war  find  themselves  in  a  pure  state  of 
nature  ...  all  feeling  of  generosity  is  to  be  silenced 
.  .  .  even  if  a  state  of  panic  amongst  women  and 
children  is  to  arise!" 

Professor  Fleischner,  of  Berlin,  publishes  in  1915 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  327 

at  Frankfort  his  opuscle  entitled,  Of  the  War  against 
German  Kultur. 

"The  greatness  of  Germany,"  says  the  professor, 
"has  not  been  wrought  by  her  merchants,  diplomats, 
scientific  men,  or  artists.  .  .  .  Only  the  mailed  fist 
can  establish  it.  .  .  .  Hit  and  destroy  ...  0  Ger- 
man spirit  .  .  .  with  the  strength  and  simplicity  of 
the  bear  and  the  child. ' ' 

Professor  Lasson  tells  his  fellow  Germans  that 

"To  observe  a  treaty  is  not  a  question  of  right 
but  of  interest.  .  .  .  Force  can  create  what  we  call 
right  .  .  .  the  weaker  becomes  the  prey  of  the 
stronger  .  .  .  and  this  .  .  .  can  be  called  moral  as 
well  as  rational." 

Professor  Kohler  writes  in  his  "Holy  War"  that 

"Might  overrules  right.  Americans  .  .  .  never 
understood  the  philosophy  of  Law.  .  .  .  We  may 
smile  .  .  .  that  the  vulgarity  of  our  critics  .  .  . 
shows  where  barbarism  and  ignorance  are  to  be 
found  in  this  War ' ' — this  war,  with  whose  causes  and 
objects  Mr.  Wilson  told  us  in  1916  that  the  United 
States  was  not  concerned. 

But  on  the  whole  I  like  this  next  selection  best,  as 
a  portrait  of  the  German  mind.  It  is  Dr.  H.  U. 
Schmidt,  of  the  University  of  Gottingen,  who  speaks 
about  the  destruction  of  the  cathedral  of  Reims  in 
an  address  of  March  22nd,  1915,  one  of  a  series  en- 
titled German  talks  in  heavy  time.  His  thesis  is, 
that  the  French  deserve  to  lose  Reims,  because  it 
was  built  when  they  were  more  worthy  of  it  than 
they  are  now.  The  doctor  says  (and  I  will  not  dis- 
arrange his  style) : 

"More  and  more  vanishes  of  course  the  German 
element  also  out  of  the  north  and  east  of  France; 


328  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

ever  less  will  henceforth  the  possibility  for  the 
French  be  to  understand  what  great  and  genuine  in 
the  German,  yea  in  the  Germanic  nature,  is.  Ever 
stronger  must  through  this  the  chasm  between  France 
and  Germany,  but  also  between  modern  France  and 
her  own  pasthood  be.  The  world  story  is  often  sym- 
bolic, and  the  sacrifice  of  the  cathedral  of  Reims — 
since  about  that  is  it  being  dealt — can  as  the  symbol 
of  the  estrangement  of  the  French  people  from  their 
own  pasthood,  how  it  itself  even  wider  yet  with 
necessity  be  drawn  must,  taken  be." 

I  sometimes  wonder  if  the  best  portrait  of  the 
German  mind — its  shape,  not  its  content — is  not  per- 
haps the  syntax  to  which  it  has  given  birth. 

We  see  it  from  the  religious  angle  in  an  interview 
which  the  renowned  chemist,  Professor  Otswald,  ac- 
corded to  "Dagen"  of  Stockholm. 

"  Question.  What  do  you  think  of  the  more  and 
more  decided  part  which  the  different  churches  are 
playing  in  the  countries  that  have  thus  far  suffered 
invasion?" 

1  'Answer.  That  is  a  consequence  impossible  to 
avoid.  The  present  situation  necessarily  invokes 
atavistic  instincts  in  many  regions.  I  will  say, 
nevertheless,  that  God  the  Father  is  reserved  with 
us  for  the  personal  use  of  the  Emperor.  Once  He 
was  mentioned  in  a  report  of  the  General  Chief  of 
Staff,  but,  note  this  well,  He  has  not  reappeared 
since." 

In  his  talks  with  Eckemann,  Goethe  says : 

"I  have  often  felt  a  profound  grief  in  thinking  of 
this  German  nation,  which  is  estimable  in  each  of 
its  individuals,  and  collectively  so  wretched.  The 
comparison  of  the  German  people  with  other  peoples 


BY    THEIR   FRUITS  329 


arouses  painful  sentiments  which  I  have  sought  to 
escape  from  by  every  possible  means." 

This  was  said  in  days  when  Prussian  education  of 
Germany  was  in  its  infancy ;  after  it  was  full  grown, 
and  the  mailed  fist  had  flung  Germany  against  civili- 
zation, Germany's  Prussianized  voice  spoke  true  to 
form,  true  to  the  word  of  the  Roman  general,  the 
word  of  Tacitus,  the  word  of  all  ages,  in  this 
outburst : 

"Let  us  give  up  our  wretched  attempts  to  excuse 
Germany,  let  us  cease  from  casting  unfounded  accu- 
sations upon  the  enemy.  It  is  not  against  our  will 
that  we  have  thrown  ourselves  into  this  gigantic 
adventure.  It  was  not  forced  upon  us  by  surprise. 
We  willed  it,  it  was  our  duty  to  will  it.  We  do  not 
stand  before  the  tribunal  of  Europe,  we  recognize 
no  such  court. 

' '  Our  might  will  create  a  new  law  in  Europe.  It 
is  Germany  who  strikes.  When  she  has  conquered 
new  realms  for  her  genius,  then  the  priests  of  all 
gods  will  praise  the  holy  war.  .  .  . 

"Germany  does  not  make  this  war  to  punish  the 
guilty  or  to  liberate  oppressed  peoples  and  rest  after- 
wards upon  the  consciousness  of  her  disinterested 
magnanimity.  She  makes  it  in  the  changeless  con- 
viction that  her  exploits  give  her  the  right  to  more 
space.  .  .  . 

"Spain,  Holland,  France,  and  England  have  seized 
and  colonized  large  territories,  the  most  fertile  on 
earth.    Germany's  hour  has  sounded.  .  .  . 

"Come,  is  Germany  strong?  Yes.  What  stuff  are 
you  telling  us,  professors  in  spectacles  and  theolo- 
gians in  slippers?     That  right  exists?     Do  those 


330  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

lofty  notions  amount  to  anything  ?  .  .  .  Force ;  a  fist ; 
that's  all!  .  .  . 

"Get  used  to  the  idea  that  in  German  land  live 
barbarians  and  warriors.  .  .  . 

"When  Tangier  and  Toulon  and  Antwerp  and 
Calais  belong  to  the  Barbaric  Power,  then  we  will 
condescended  to  talk  to  you  sometimes." 

This  was  Maximilian  Harden  in  the  Zukunft. 

After  the  thorough  education  which  Prussia  had 
been  giving  Germany  for  several  generations,  this 
changeless  conviction  is  perfectly  natural ;  but  what 
is  perfectly  extraordinary  is  to  hear  people  excusing 
her  on  the  ground  that  she  was  merely  doing  at  last 
what  other  nations  had  done  at  first.  The  other  na- 
tions could  not  have  done  it  and  would  not  have 
dared  to  do  it,  if  the  weaker  peoples  whom  they 
conquered  had  been  strong  enough  to  stand  them  off. 
By  like  reasoning,  the  apologists  who  offer  these 
extenuating  circumstances  in  Germany's  case,  would 
invite  Mr.  Smith  to  forgive  a  burglar  who  had  been 
caught  breaking  into  his  house,  because  previous 
burglars  had  successfully  stolen  the  silver  spoons 
of  Mr.  Jones. 

Is  the  "changeless  conviction"  changed? 

When  the  iron  was  hot,  and  the  fierce  shock  of 
the  war  was  stinging  public  attention  awake,  the 
words  of  Harden  were  vividly  familiar,  often  quoted 
together  with  many  others  like  them  that  are  faded 
utterly  out  of  the  general  memory,  now  that  the  iron 
is  cold.  When  reminded  of  them  today,  the  apolo- 
gists not  infrequently  reply: 

"Ah  yes;  but  we  have  a  new  Germany  since  the 
war.  She  has  seen  a  great  light.  She  is  industrious 
and  peace  loving.    If  any  of  the  old  Junker  spirit 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  331 

survives,  it  is  a  negligible  influence,  and  on  the 
wane." 

But  is  the  conviction  changed? 

Some  signs  of  this  were  apparent,  to  be  sure ;  some 
editorials,  some  public  utterances,  showed  a  new 
spirit.  Vorwaerts,  the  Berlin  paper,  declared  that 
"the  German  Republic  must  repair  the  crimes 
of  Imperial  Germany  .  .  .  and  that  is  why  it 
should  silence  the  admirers  of  the  old  regime  who 
now  would  lift  up  their  voices  in  reference  to  this 
question. ' ' 

Such  opinions  did  not  strike  me  as  plentiful,  they 
seemed  confined  to  the  small  handful  of  bold  and 
liberal  papers.  The  Deutsche  Tageszeitung  was 
more  representative. 

"The  hate  between  Frenchmen  and  Germans  is 
ineradicable, "  it  said,  "Europe  will  know  no  repose 
until  the  eternal  peace  disturber  is  annihilated  politi- 
cally and  militarily ;  and  this  moment  is  perhaps  less 
distant  than  may  be  thought." 

To  any  eyes  on  the  watch  for  them,  gleams  like 
this  of  the  mailed  fist  shone  through  not  infrequent 
holes  in  the  soft  glove.  While  the  laments  over  Ger- 
many's poverty  and  her  utter  inability  to  pay  the 
reparation  flowed  copiously,  in  a  daily  stream,  from 
the  pens  of  editors  and  the  lips  of  politicians,  now 
and  then  something  like  this,  from  the  Welt  am 
Montag,  would  appear : 

"Everybody  knows  that  millions  in  paper  money 
have  been  hidden  away  to  escape  from  taxation.  It 
must  also  be  recognized  that  agriculture  is  rolling 
in  wealth.  ..."  And  the  journal  is  so  incautious  as 
to  publish  specific  details  of  prosperity: 

As  against  a  five  per  cent,  dividend  the  year  pre- 


332  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

ceding,  the  Rheingan  sugar  refinery  had  this  year 
declared  forty-eight  per  cent. 

The  Sugar  Trade  Union  of  Hamburg  had  risen 
from  sixteen  and  a  half  to  forty-eight  per  cent. 

The  Diisseldorf  Blast  Furnace  Company  in  1920 
made  a  profit  of  twenty-two  million  marks  on  a  capi- 
tal of  three  million  six  hundred  thousand. 

The  Sandloch  Lead  Works,  capital  one  and  a  half 
million,  made  a  profit  of  seven  million  marks. 

The  Concordia  Chemical  Factory  paid  eight  per 
cent,  one  year,  seventy-five  per  cent,  the  next. 

The  North  German  Iron  Trucks  rose  from  eight 
to  sixty  per  cent. 

Observing  travellers  in  Germany  noticed  a  curious 
difference  in  appearance  between  those  parts  of  the 
Fatherland  under  military  occupation  and  in  the 
beaten  routes  of  foreign  travel,  and  those  parts  where 
foreign  travel  was  infrequent.  In  occupied  Rhine- 
land,  stoves  were  in  the  restaurants  and  hotels,  trains 
were  cold  and  bad,  streets  were  unlighted;  France 
was  envied  the  coal  she  took  from  Germany  and 
did  not  need,  while  here  it  was  needed  so  sorely. 
But  if  one  penetrated  into  districts  more  intimately 
German,  where  nothing  had  been  arranged  for  effect 
on  foreign  visitors,  bread  cards,  though  required  by 
printed  rules,  were  never  asked  for;  there  were  no 
temporary  stoves,  the  central  heating  systems  were 
going,  the  hotels  and  trains  were  so  hot  that  windows 
had  to  be  open ;  in  short,  lignite  was  taking  the  place 
of  coal  very  satisfactorily,  there  was  plenty  of  it, 
and  there  was  an  effort  to  hide  this  fact  from  the 
Allies.  Travellers  who  happened  to  visit  Turkish 
baths,  circuses,  cinema  shows,  merry-go-rounds,  out- 
side the  zone  of  foreign  visitors,  were  not  at  all 


BY    THEIR   FRUITS  333 

deceived  as  to  the  camouflaged  dearth  of  coal.  They 
noticed,  too,  even  while  they  were  hearing  the  cries 
of  distress  and  the  assertions  that  German  industry 
and  prosperity  were  paralyzed,  that  forests  of  fresh 
scaffolding  bristled  in  large  towns  where  corpora- 
tions and  banks  were  in  the  act  of  erecting  palatial 
quarters  wherein  to  house  their  expanding  needs; 
they  observed  that  a  vast  new  underground  railway 
system  was  being  pushed  forward  in  Berlin;  it 
seemed  odd  to  them  that  if  funds  were  so  scarce, 
two  millions  should  have  been  voted  to  the  State 
Fair  at  Leipzig  in  1920,  and  twenty  millions  to  the 
same  enterprise  in  1921.  This  grant  was  made  at  a 
time  not  remote  from  the  London  Conference,  where 
Dr.  von  Simons  assured  Mr.  Lloyd  George  that  Ger- 
many could  not  possibly  pay  in  reparation  more  than 
two  billion  and  a  half  pounds  in  forty-two  years, 
instead  of  the  eleven  billion  and  a  third  demanded  by 
the  Allies.  At  that  moment,  the  tax  per  head  in 
Germany  was  three  pounds,  while  in  England  it  was 
twenty- two. 

Mr.  Lloyd  George  broke  off  his  conversation  with 
Dr.  von  Simons,  and  said  later  to  his  English  and 
French  colleagues: 

1  'If  we  had  let  him  talk  for  ten  minutes  more,  we 
should  have  been  owing  Germany  several  billion." 

In  those  days  when  Dr.  von  Simons  was  explain- 
ing to  Mr.  Lloyd  George  that  Germany  had  nothing 
wherewith  to  pay  her  reparations,  the  news  that  her 
factories  were  doing  a  disastrous  business  reached 
America,  and  Americans  at  once  made  large  offers 
to  buy  these  ruined  German  plants.  Not  an  offer  was 
accepted,  not  a  factory  was  for  sale ! 

"When  an  American  in  search  of  them  visited  the 


334  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

great  Krupp  establishment  at  Essen,  he  did  not  find 
it  shut  up.  What  he  found  was  a  place  where  work- 
men worked  for  one-seventh  the  pay  of  English  labor, 
and  did  not  strike ;  where  they  worked  full  hours,  and 
so  far  from  being  anarchistic  were  they  that  they 
touched  their  hats  to  their  employers  and  went  to  it 
with  the  same  drill  of  mind  and  body  which  had  un- 
loaded the  scenery  from  the  dray  in  Dresden,  and 
kept  the  revolution  off  the  grass  in  Berlin;  a  place 
that  was  turning  out  three  hundred  locomotives  a 
year,  three  thousand  cars  a  year,  trucks  in  propor- 
tion, cinema  apparatus,  sewing  machines,  everything 
in  short  that  can  be  made  of  steel ;  and  a  place  which 
had  employed  thirty-five  thousand  men  before  the 
war,  and  was  now  employing  forty-five  thousand. 

If  this  American  traveller  had  continued  to  go 
about  the  Fatherland  in  quest  of  factories  for  sale, 
he  would  have  found : 

1.  Jena,  turning  out  cheaper  and  better  optical 
glass  than  any  competitors;  from  furnace  to  show 
room  a  gigantic  organization  busy  over  every  stage 
of  construction  from  the  making  of  the  glass  to  the 
mounting  of  it  in  microscopes,  cameras,  field  glasses, 
cinema  projectors,  theodolites,  ultramicroscopes, 
nautical  and  astronomic  instruments;  and  ten  thou- 
sand serious  workmen  employed  upon  this.  For 
these  men  in  times  of  recreation,  libraries,  reading 
rooms,  parks  were  constructed. 

2.  Leipzig,  printing  newspapers,  periodicals,  illus- 
trated colored  plates,  Latin  and  Greek  books,  cata- 
logues, trade  papers  of  fifty  pages,  and  sensational 
novels — all  cheap.  Pulp  is  plentiful  because  Ger- 
many used  Polish  forests  during  the  war,  and  saved 
her  own  for  peace. 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  335 

3.  Dresden,  making  pianos,  organs,  steam  organs, 
instruments  to  suit  all  national  preferences,  little 
grands  for  bridal  housekeeping,  tall  uprights  for 
Spain,  Italy,  South  America;  and  wires  for  these, 
as  well  as  for  violins,  mandolins,  and  guitars.  Beside 
this  industry  of  Dresden  are  the  porcelain  works  at 
Meissen,  where  workmen  proud  of  their  hereditary 
descent  from  those  selected  for  the  works  by  King 
August  II  in  1710  were  making  fake  antiques  for 
New  York  dealers,  telegraph  insulators,  hand-painted 
sets  of  egg-shell  china,  crucibles  for  scientific  use, 
electric  lampshades,  statuettes,  vases  and  plates  imi- 
tating the  wares  of  Copenhagen,  Sevres,  and  Li- 
moges. Living  is  cheap  in  Meissen,  and  the  work- 
men's houses  clean  and  pretty. 

4.  Pforzheim,  carving  bone  for  combs,  pendants, 
necklaces,  beads;  handbags,  umbrella  handles;  little 
cats  and  pigs  in  bronze  or  celluloid  or  imitation 
crystal  for  the  watch  chain;  every  sort  of  cheap 
jewelry ;  souvenir  brooches  with  Venice,  Seville,  and 
the  Passion  Play  at  Oberammergau  done  in  color  on 
their  glazed  convexity ;  souvenir  spoons  showing  the 
ruined  cathedral  of  Reims;  and,  to  advertise  a  cer- 
tain make  of  automobile,  neat  pencils  lettered  in  six 
different  languages  and  distributed  free  throughout 
the  world ;  knickknacks  inscribed  with  publicity  mat- 
ters in  Turkish,  Japanese,  and  Russian  characters. 
Wages  at  Pforzheim  had  gone  up. 

5.  Frankfort  and  Mannheim  fabricating  cheap 
dry  goods,  employing  as  many  hands  as  before  the 
war. 

6.  Berlin  and  its  suburbs  equally  busy ;  east  Ber- 
lin over  enamel  ware,  pianos,  optical  goods,  furni- 
ture, textiles,  domestic  chattels  generally,  including 


336  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

jewelry,  confectionery,  carved  frames  and  cases,  per- 
fume, fans ;  north  Berlin  over  heavier  work,  electric 
and  railway  supplies.  In  the  science  of  perfume 
several  experiments  were  being  successfully  made — 
in  dry  scent,  for  example,  a  powdered  perfume  which 
dissolves  when  sprinkled  upon  a  warm  hand;  syn- 
thetic essences,  smelling  like  strawberries,  pine- 
apples, mushrooms,  that  never  saw  a  strawberry  or 
pineapple  or  mushroom;  soap  in  quantity,  in  spite 
of  the  loudly  alleged  shortage  of  fat.  At  another 
suburb,  Charlottenburg,  drugs  and  medicines.  These 
had  been  made  near  Cologne  until  the  Armistice,  and 
they  were  then  hurriedly  removed  out  of  reach  of 
the  Allies'  observation,  lest  these  chemical  secrets 
should  become  known  outside  of  Germany.  The  un- 
divulged  processes  are  now  producing  medicines  in 
far  greater  volume  than  before  the  war.  They  are 
in  demand  all  over  the  world  and  their  retail  price 
is  three  and  four  hundred  times  the  cost  of  produc- 
tion. To  escape  export  duties  a  brisk  traffic  in  smug- 
gling goes  on  at  various  frontiers.  I  skip  Chemnitz 
and  its  dry  goods,  and  Plauen  with  its  lace  and  dye- 
ing and  bleaching,  and  other  places. 

None  of  these  establishments  was  for  sale ;  it  was 
the  same  everywhere;  the  American  quest  would 
have  been  fruitless  in  purchases,  but  very  profitable 
in  experience. 

In  their  offer  to  buy  German  manufactories,  our 
business  men  had  meant  business,  had  been  perfectly 
serious;  they  believed  the  "hard  luck"  stories  so 
ingeniously  circulated.  Their  failure  to  find  any 
acceptances  of  their  offers  revealed  to  them  that 
what  they  had  unwittingly  done  was  to  "call  a  bluff. " 

It  may  be  said  that  among  all  the  industries  in 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  337 

which  she  excels,  propaganda  is  at  the  head  of  Ger- 
many's list;  the  organization  of  private  industry 
stands  second,  but  still  so  high  as  to  overtop  anything 
of  the  sort  in  those  countries  which  are  her  competi- 
tors.   This  organization  is  being  perfected  every  day ; 
Germany's  set-back  has  vitalized  her  energy,  while 
the  Allies'  has  been  slackened  by  their  sterile  vic- 
tory.    She  has  carried  Trusts  into  higher  terms, 
under  the  title  Community  of  Interests  Association, 
whereunder   all  productive   factors,   from  the   raw 
material  at  the  bottom  to  the  finished  article  at  the 
top,   are   gathered   and   co-related   under   a   single 
management.    This  is  known  as  the  " vertical  line" 
system.    For  instance,  if  a  company  made  telephones, 
it  would  acquire  control  of  all  the  areas  from  which 
all  the  raw  materials  needed  for  a  complete  telephone 
are  drawn — mines,  forests — and  also  all  the  corpora- 
tions which  manufacture  wire,  or  electrical  appara- 
tus, or  fixtures  such  as  hotels  and  offices  use,  switch- 
boards, everything  necessary  to  a  system  in  complete 
working  order.    Or  again  if  coal  is  at  the  bottom  and 
hardware  of  every  description  at  the  top  of  a  verti- 
cal line  of  production,  one  huge  hand  of  the  Com- 
munity of  Interests  Association  grasps  both  ends 
and   everything  between,   and   conducts   the   whole 
work  harmoniously,  with  the  least  possible  waste  and 
the  greatest  possible  gain.    Meanwhile,  the  workmen 
of  Germany  who  carry  on  the  physical  part  of  this 
vast  activity  retain  their  habit  of  drill,  have  no  use 
for  strikes,  and  are  satisfied  with  their  state.    Small 
concerns  outside  the  association  of  giants  have  come 
to  grief,  and  these  cases  have  been  adroitly  used  to 
convey  the  idea  of  a  general  collapse. 

"They  will  cheat  you  yet,  those  Junkers." 


338  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

With  such  organized  energy,  it  is  not  wonderful 
that  industrial  dividends  went  from  eight  to  sixty 
per  cent,  and  that  a  billion  of  profit  is  already  in- 
vested in  foreign  securities.  Germany,  with  mas- 
terly self-control,  made  herself  ready  to  sell  to  the 
world,  and  now  the  world  has  begun  to  buy  from 
her.  Before  the  war  she  saved  ten  billion  marks  a 
year;  were  she  to  save  eight  billion  now,  it  would 
more  than  meet  the  requirements  of  her  reparation. 
It  is  to  be  noticed  that  one  of  the  leading  financiers 
of  New  York — not  affiliated  with  German  concerns — 
has  stated  that  the  payments,  spread  over  forty-two 
years,  if  capitalized  at  Sy2%,  will  form  a  sum  of  about 
thirteen  billion  dollars,  which  Germany  can  pay 
easily.  Under  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort,  when  she 
was  victorious  in  1871,  she  laid  down  and  acted  upon 
the  principle  that  the  nation  provoking  the  war 
ought  to  pay  the  costs  of  the  war.  She  has  not  been 
dealt  with  according  to  her  own  rule;  the  Allies 
deliberately  have  not  asked  Germany  to  pay  one 
single  mark  for  the  cost  that  they  incurred  in  defend- 
ing themselves :  therein  lies  the  profound  difference, 
both  practical  and  moral,  between  the  indemnity 
exacted  by  Germany  in  1871  from  France  who  had 
provoked  the  war  and  was  beaten,  and  the  reparation 
demanded  by  the  Allies  from  Germany  for  the  in- 
juries that  she  inflicted  upon  the  land,  the  houses, 
and  the  manufactories  of  France.  Most  financial 
writers  that  I  have  read,  even  Mr.  Frank  Vanderlip, 
whose  book  is  the  latest  and  quite  the  best  that  I 
know,  constantly  speak  of  the  indemnity  demanded 
from  Germany :  this  is  false  to  fact,  and  it  misleads 
many  readers  who  have  not  gone  into  the  matter. 

It  seems  to  me  also  that  these  financiers  are  them- 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  339 

selves  confused  by  the  horrible  condition  of  state 
finance  in  Germany,  while  they  overlook  the  vigor- 
ous health  of  private  finance,  the  large  dividends, 
the  invested  billion  of  profit.  No  doubt  the  govern- 
ment has  paid  the  deficits  of  railroads  whose  trans- 
portation was  artificially  cheap,  the  losses  on  exports 
sold  needlessly  below  cost ;  has  rioted  in  paper  money, 
kept  a  huge  army  of  salaried  Junkers  in  office,  and 
is  consequently  without  funds  to  pay  its  current 
expenses.  "What  has  that  to  do  with  the  reparation? 
How  is  it  that  new  banks  and  buildings  are  going 
up,  and  twenty  million  marks  are  voted  to  the  Leipzig 
Fair?  If  private  Germans  are  making  millions, 
whose  fault  is  it  that  the  public  purse  is  empty — if 
it  is  empty?  A  man  who  kept  two  bank  accounts, 
one  overdrawn  and  a  thousand  dollars  in  the  other, 
would  not  be  allowed  to  plead  bankruptcy. 

The  financier  who  was  pardoned  by  Mr.  Taft  on 
account  of  his  ill  health,  ate  soap  for  days  to  make 
himself  an  emaciated  and  pitiable  object.  "When  he 
was  let  out  he  changed  his  diet  and  soon  resumed  his 
old  appearance  and  previous  habits.  It  looks  more 
than  likely  that  the  German  Government  has  been 
eating  soap.  I  suggest  that  the  financiers  inquire 
a  little  further  into  the  case  before  they  ask  France 
and  the  rest  of  us  to  commute  the  Fatherland's  sen- 
tence of  reparation.  I  think  that  they  ought  to  re- 
member more  often  than  they  do,  how  sure  they 
were  that  the  war  would  be  a  short  one;  and  that 
before  asking  the  world  to  help  in  lifting  weak  Ger- 
many on  her  legs,  they  should  make  us  all  sure  not 
only  that  she  can  not  get  on  them  by  herself,  but 
also  that  when  she  is  up  she  will  not  promptly  knock 
us  all  down. 


340  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

What  is  the  mailed  fist  doing  beneath  its  glove, 
meanwhile  % 

Articles  160  and  178  in  the  Treaty  of  Versailles 
are  definite: 

"The  number  of  effectives  in  the  army  of  those 
states  which  constitute  Germany  must  not  exceed 
100,000  men,  and  shall  be  exclusively  for  the  purpose 
of  maintaining  order  and  for  policing  the  frontiers. 

"All  measures  of  mobilization  are  forbidden." 

Article  176  forbids  military  academies.  Berlin 
had  one,  Munich  another.  Over  these  the  glove  was 
drawn.  In  each  of  the  division  staffs,  staff  courses 
of  lectures  were  created,  to  which  the  entrance  ex- 
aminations were  like  those  of  the  military  academy. 
The  documents  of  the  army  were  collected  at  Berlin 
in  a  war  library.  To  sort  and  classify  these  and  to 
aid  in  research  and  historic  study,  officers  were  sum- 
moned from  time  to  time.  It  was  not  mentioned  that 
those  officers  permanently  in  custody  of  the  library 
gave  courses  of  lectures  and  conducted  exercises. 
The  officers  who  formerly  taught  at  the  military 
academy  no  longer  wear  uniforms,  but  frock  coats 
instead  and  are  under  civil  jurisdiction;  in  these  cir- 
cumstances they  continue  to  teach  what  they  taught 
before — for  the  instruction  of  their  "Sipo,"  their 
Sichereitspolizei — their  police.  These  police  forces 
are  most  remarkable.  Each  man  has  a  gas-mask, 
although  Article  171  forbids  the  further  manufac- 
ture of  poisonous  gas. 

Up  to  October  1919,  the  demobilization  bureau 
retained  lists  of  reservists,  but  as  these  men  were 
slowly  dispersed  the  rolls  of  their  names  were  dis- 
tributed among  the  local  recruiting  bureaus,  which 
are  conveniently  called  pension  bureaus.     By  their 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  341 

means  mobilization  could  be  rapidly  effected.  In 
1920  the  old  army,  apparently  dispersed  in  accord- 
ance with  the  treaty,  was  replaced  by  the  "Reichs- 
wehr,"  to  which  the  regulars  of  the  old  army  can 
be  despatched  by  means  of  the  rolls  of  their  names 
at  the  local  "pension"  offices.  In  his  Koenigsberg 
speech,  Ludendorff  in  August  1921  lauded  the  excel- 
lence of  the  old  army,  which  he  declared  the  Reichs- 
wehr  must  imitate. 

"Think,"  he  said,  "what  won  us  Tannenberg:  the 
will  of  the  chiefs,  faith  in  them,  discipline  and  cour- 
age in  the  face  of  death.  .  .  .  The  greater  our  coun- 
try's need  the  closer  will  we  rally  round  the  black, 
white,  and  red  Prussian  flag." 

This  Reichswehr  numbered  300,000  men  in  August 
1919,  320,000  in  November,  and  370,000  in  February 
1921.  If  to  these  be  added  two  corps  organized  in 
Lithuania  and  Lattonia,  and  the  regulars  retained 
under  the  treaty,  the  total  mounts  above  420,000  in 
February  1920.'  On  February  18th,  1920,  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  granted  an  "extension"  to  the  time  limit 
for  German  demobilization  set  by  the  treaty.  This 
caused  much  Teutonic  joy. 

The  treaty  was  signed  June  28th,  1919;  by  July 
Germany  had  created  a  State  Police  force  in  addi- 
tion to  the  force  existing  before  the  war.  That  was 
divided  into  two  classes,  Ordnungspolizei — Order 
Police  —  and  Kriminalpolizei  —  Criminal  Police  — 
each  a  body  for  maintaining  law  and  order  in  cities, 
in  other  words,  a  municipal  force,  armed  with  re- 
volvers only. 

This  new  Sichereitspolizei  —  Safety  Police  —  was 
for  the  repression  of  mobs.  Its  organization  was 
military,  with  companies,  battalions,  regiments,  bri- 


342  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

gades,  divisions ;  its  equipment  was  the  same  as  that 
of  the  Reichswehr,  even  to  cannons,  minenwerfer, 
and  liaison  material.  Its  uniform  was  green,  the  old 
police  wore  blue. 

By  October  1919,  this  "Sipo"  was  already  a  little 
army,  its  Berlin  contingent  commanded  by  a  briga- 
dier general,  its  complement  three  corps  of  3,000 
men,  with  two  parks  of  artillery,  1  squadron,  1  liaison 
detachment.  One-third  of  this  force  was  in  service, 
one  in  readiness,  one  in  repose.  In  the  spring  of 
1920,  exercises  between  it  and  the  Reichswehr  re- 
doubled. In  June  the  Allies  at  Boulogne  made  a 
sign  of  expostulation;  they  shook  their  finger  at  it, 
and  said  it  must  stop.  Three  months  later  it  was 
somewhat  larger  than  in  June.  The  Fatherland  pro- 
fessed herself  deeply  alarmed  by  her  state  of  internal 
unrest ;  still,  her  desire  was  only  to  please  the  Allies. 
Therefore,  being  composed  of  18  sovereign  states 
and  13  of  these  having  a  "Sipo,"  10  resolved  to 
disband  it  and  one  joined  them  later.  Sipo  disap- 
peared, but  immediately  appeared  a  new  force,  named 
the  Schutzpolizei.  The  entire  Sipo  passed  into  this, 
dropping  in  its  metamorphosis  some  inferior  mate- 
rial and  replacing  this  with  younger  and  better  stuff. 

During  April  1919,  an  agitation  in  Munich  made 
the  establishing  of  the  Einwohnerwehr  most  easy  and 
convenient.  The  citizens  had  been  frightened  and 
this  new  force  gave  them  peace  of  mind.  This  body 
had  been  started  by  a  law  passed  on  the  12th  of  the 
preceding  December;  the  events  at  Munich  gave  it 
fresh  impetus.  Its  ramifications  spread  through  the 
Fatherland,  it  was  provided  with  arms.  To  the 
world  outside  it  was  presented  as  a  defence  against 
internal  disorders;  the  trouble  appeared  on  investi- 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  343 

gation  to  be,  that  Germany  had  so  little  disorder  and 
so  much  defence,  and  that  such  an  amount  of  arms 
which  by  the  treaty  should  have  been  delivered  to 
the  Allies  is  not  plausibly  represented  as  essential 
to  this  defence.  Constant  meetings  of  the  young, 
who  formed  the  Einwohnerwehr,  kept  their  hands 
and  eyes  skilful  at  target  shooting  and  other  military 
accomplishments.  Under  the  pressure  of  remon- 
strance, this  vigorous  training  society,  like  Sipo, 
dispersed  as  mercury  when  pressed  beneath  the  fin- 
ger ;  and,  when  the  finger  was  removed,  came  together 
again.  A  new  set  of  labels  was  invented  for  it,  very 
long  names  like  Schiitzorganization  and  Selbschiitz- 
organization ;  but  underneath  them,  there  it  was. 
Bavaria  was  very  slow  in  performing  the  dispersal. 
Behind  all  this  disguised  militarism,  work  some 
societies  who  are  loyal  to  the  old  German  traditions, 
and  to  whom  democracy  is  distasteful.  The  animus 
of  these  societies  may  or  may  not  be  the  cause  of 
that  setting  of  the  tide  away  from  the  communistic 
parties  and  towards  the  traditional  dynastic  form  of 
government;  certainly  there  is  a  close  correspond- 
ence between  the  facts.  It  is,  however,  probable  that 
quite  independent  of  any  secret  organization,  the 
wish  to  return  to  the  old  ways  lies  deep  in  the  breast 
of  many  a  German  who  is  not  a  member  of  any  of 
them.  The  Orgesch  is  the  principal  secret  society 
of  this  sort  in  Bavaria,  in  the  Tyrol  next  door  it  is 
the  Orka ;  there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  in  this  part 
of  Europe,  as  in  several  others,  the  frontiers  which 
were  shuffled  and  redealt  so  lightly  at  the  Peace  Con- 
ference will  not  remain  in  their  present  arrange- 
ment :  it  was  too  often  a  derangement — a  violence  to 
ancient  association,  a  dislocation  of  beneficent  chan- 


344  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

nels  of  trade,  and  a  hurried  and  ignorant  tying  up  of 
the  dog  and  the  cat  in  the  same  bag.    Bavaria  may 
loom  a  very  important  nucleus  of  a  new  Central 
Europe  empire,  when  the  various  organizations  that  I 
have  mentioned  will  play  their  thoroughly  rehearsed 
parts.    At  certain  schools  today,  two  months'  mili- 
tary instruction  has  been  slipped  into  the  curriculum. 
All  the  while  that  these  activities  have  been  going 
on  beneath  the  nose  of  the  Entente,  news  has  been 
constantly     coming     of     secret     stores     of     arms. 
Throughout  my  eight  months  in  Europe,  one  read 
almost  every  week  of  these  being  discovered.     It 
would  be  in  East  Prussia,  where  the  key  to  some 
door  was  "lost"  when  the  Entente  inspector  came 
his  rounds.    The  door  was  forced  and  thousands  of 
rifles  were  hidden  there;  or  it  would  be  in  Berlin 
that  a  treasure  house  of  military  telephone  and  tele- 
graph apparatus  was  unearthed.    In  many  directions 
these  "caches"  of  every  kind  of  implement  and 
munition  of  war,  great  and  small,  were  being  found ; 
while  on  the  other  hand,  some  gigantic  objects,  like 
the  Big  Bertha  guns,  have  never  been  found  at  all. 
The  explosions  at  chemical  and  dye  works,  far  more 
frequent  in  the  Fatherland  than  ever  before,  lead 
one  to  wonder  what  the  Germans  can  be  making: 
one  recalls  those  gas-masks  of  the  polizei.     Now 
and  then,  too,  comes  another  gleam  of  the  mailed 
fist  through  some  incautious  hole  in  the  glove;  on 
February  11th,  1921,  the  Volhzeitung  said : 

"That  nation  will  be  victorious  which  shall  have 
discovered  the  most  virulent  germ  to  spread  in  the 
country  of  its  enemy  and  the  surest  vaccine  to  render 
itself  immune.  Fifty  agents  would  be  enough  to 
infect  as  large  a  country  as  Germany." 

Months  later,  General  Ludendorff,  running  true 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  345 

to  form  in  his  new  book,  "Politics  and  the  Conduct 
of  War,"  says: 

"  Conflict  for  the  individual  as  for  the  State  is  a 
permanent  natural  phenomenon,  and  is  founded  in 
the  divine  ordinance  of  the  world  ...  we  must  have 
done  once  for  all  with  the  talk  of  such  things  as  eter- 
nal peace,  disarmament,  and  reconciliation  of  man- 
kind .  .  .  war  will  continue  to  be  the  last  and  only- 
decisive  instrument  of  policy.  .  .  . 

"There  must  again  be  a  Kaiser  .  .  .  the  birth  of 
Prussianism  must  again  be  blown  into  the  adminis- 
tration framework.  .  .  .  Political  leaders  .  .  .  are 
to  be  trained  in  school  and  university  in  the  doctrines 
of  Clausewitz." 

Quite  near  the  time  when  this  book  appeared,  dur- 
ing the  last  rnonths  of  1921,  six  hundred  howitzers 
of  large  calibre  were  found  walled  up  in  the  Rock- 
stroh  near  Dresden.  The  Entente  investigators  were 
discouraged  in  their  search  by  many  artifices  and 
objections,  but  they  went  on. 

Dr.  Wirth,  in  whose  government  and  good  inten- 
tions much  confidence  is  placed  by  Mr.  Vanderlip, 
was  sure  that  these  arms  had  been  made  before  the 
war,  and  were  concealed  to  be  broken  up  as  old  mate- 
rial. Is  this  innocence  on  the  part  of  the  Chancellor  ? 
But  what  if  it  is?  The  guns  were  made  after  the 
Armistice.  Breechblocks  and  other  parts  of  342 
howitzers  were  next  discovered,  five  rifling  machines 
were  hidden  under  the  floor,  seven  times  the  number 
of  howitzers  allowed  by  the  treaty  were  discovered 
in  this  one  factory,  with  official  invoices  directing 
the  guns  to  be  kept  here  and  not  forwarded,  as  usual, 
to  the  arsenal  at  Spandau.  At  Spandau  were  found 
two  rooms  packed  from  floor  to  ceiling  with  papers 


346  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

concerning  the  strength  of  the  German  Army  at  the 
time  of  the  Armistice ;  these,  when  asked  for  at  that 
time  and  ever  since,  were  reported  as  "lost."  The 
Entente  investigators,  who  would  appear  to  be  among 
the  most  humorous  characters  alive,  left  them  under 
a  guard  of  the  Spandau  military  authorities  over- 
night, and  returned  to  get  them  the  next  morning. 
They  were  all  lost  again. 

In  Upper  Silesia,  since  October,  the  French  have 
reported  numerous  discoveries  of  concealed  arms — 
seven  since  January  1st,  1922 ;  six  hundred  shells  for 
heavy  guns  found  in  a  barn;  in  a  coach  house  the 
equipment  for  a  company  of  infantry;  others  in  the 
park  of  a  country  house,  in  a  music  hall,  and  in  a 
deaf  and  dumb  asylum.  At  the  end  of  January  the 
Germans  made  an  armed  attack  upon  French  who 
were  searching  for  concealed  arms,  wounding  twenty 
and  killing  two.  This  was  about  six  months  after 
General  Ludendorff  's  assurance  to  the  students  of 
Koenigsberg  that  the  fate  of  Upper  Silesia  would 
be  decided  soon  or  late  by  a  battle. 

Where  is  the  moral  disarmament,  where  the 
changed  intention  1  What  converted  and  pacific  Ger- 
many is  to  be  found  in  all  this?  And  what  matters 
it  whether  Chancellor  Wirth  and  his  government  are 
the  deluded  or  the  conniving  cats'  paws  of  Kultur? 
Since  the  Armistice,  as  before  it,  Germany  has  run 
true  to  form,  and  by  her  fruits  any  one  can  know 
her.  The  mind's  eye  sees  the  big  dividends  secretly 
shuffled  into  foreign  investments,  the  big  guns  se- 
cretly manufactured,  the  thousands  of  young  stu- 
dents secretly  drilled — and  the  renowned  chemist, 
Dr.  Otswald,  closeted  over  test  tubes,  retorts,  and 
microscopes  with  his  scientific  brethren,  trying  for 


BY   THEIR   FRUITS  347 

new  explosives  no  larger  than  an  egg,  but  able  to 
flatten  Paris,  London,  and  New  York  to  dust;  and 
trying  for  a  new  germ,  bred  from  all  the  deadliest 
contagions  that  will  mingle,  and  capable  of  rotting 
any  community  to  deliquescence  in  twenty-four  hours. 

Such  a  people  may  not  be  precisely  lovable,  but 
they  are  in  truth  a  great  race;  their  industry  puts 
us  all  to  shame,  and  one  bows  to  their  impregnable 
steadfastness  to  themselves.  One  can  hardly  over- 
praise the  power  of  their  team-work,  or  over-damn 
the  wabbling  incoherence  of  some  of  their  adver- 
saries, into  whose  feeble  political  hands  Foch  the 
soldier  delivered  them  in  November  1918. 

Is  there  in  the  whole  course  of  history  a  spectacle 
more  stupefying? 


XXVI 

MILITARISTIC  % 

To  divert  attention  from  herself,  Germany  has 
been  pointing  the  finger  of  accusation  at  France. 

''Behold  the  trouble  maker!"  she  says  to  her  own 
people  and  to  the  Allies;  "see  what  a  big  army  she 
is  keeping  up." 

It  is  an  old  trick.  Policemen  are  familiar  with 
it  when  there  is  disorder  in  the  street,  and  they  have 
been  known  to  arrest  the  wrong  man.  Of  course 
the  German  people  are  taken  in  by  it.  Under  the 
forty  years  of  drill  to  which  their  minds  have  been 
subjected  by  Prussia,  they  accept  all  official  state- 
ments automatically ;  they  have  believed  and  will  go 
on  believing  anything  that  Berlin  tells  them.  At 
the  age  when  the  children  learn  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
they  have  been  taught  the  following  words : 

' '  Germany  is  my  fatherland,  a  country  surrounded 
by  enemies." 

Upon  a  soil  so  carefully  tilled,  the  seed  of  any 
lie  will  grow.  This  Prussian  perversion  continues 
unimpeded,  and  the  preparation  of  no  germ  or  ex- 
plosive could  be  more  dangerous,  since  it  is  the  man 
behind  the  gun  that  counts.  Therefore  it  is  wholly 
natural  and  inevitable  that  sixty-five  or  seventy 
millions  of  Germans  should  believe  Prussia  when  she 
accused  France  of  militarism.  But  why  should  any- 
body else?   Why  should  English  and  Americans  look 

348 


MILITARISTIC?  349 

in  the  direction  that  Germany  is  pointing,  and 
express  themselves  as  shocked  at  the  large  army  of 
France  at  a  time  when  all  really  good  persons  are 
talking  about  disarmament?  It  is  remarkably  like 
the  policeman  arresting  the  wrong  man  in  the  street, 
and  it  is  also  a  piece  of  the  whole  stupefying 
spectacle. 

At  the  Peace  Conference,  France  asked  for  a  Rhine 
frontier  by  way  of  protection  against  further  inva- 
sions from  Germany.  This  she  was  prevented  from 
getting  by  England  and  the  United  States ;  but  these 
friends  of  hers  offered  her  something  in  exchange 
for  what  she  gave  up;  they  would  bind  themselves 
to  come  to  her  help  in  case  Germany  should  ever 
assault  her  again  without  provocation.  Renouncing 
her  Rhine  frontier,  she  accepted  this  offer.  Then  her 
friends  went  home.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  been 
careful  to  make  England's  promise  depend  upon 
America's;  so  that  when  it  turned  out  that  Mr. 
Wilson  had  promised  more  than  he  could  perform, 
it  all  fell  down.  France  had  given  up  her  Rhine 
frontier  and  got — nothing;  she  was  left  by  England 
and  America  to  take  care  of  herself. 

Against  sixty-five  million  Germans,  France  counts 
thirty-eight.  Her  people  saw  German  hordes  come 
in  to  pillage  and  burn  before  the  land  was  named 
France,  or  the  invaders  were  called  Germans.  From 
the  year  102  before  Christ,  when  the  Cimbri  and 
Teutones  got  almost  to  Marseilles  and  were  stopped 
by  the  Roman  general,  Marius,  down  to  Ludendorff's 
last  lunge  at  the  Marne  in  1918,  the  land  of  France 
has  been  incessantly  trodden  down  by  the  barbarians. 
Sometimes  they  got  no  farther  than  the  Oise,  or 
Verdun;  sometimes  they  swept  to  the  Somme,  or 


350  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFOETH 

overran  Franche-Conte*  and  threatened  Italy  from 
the  stronghold  of  Besancon ;  sometimes  they  swarmed 
into  the  Rhone  Basin  and  destroyed  Lyons.  There 
were  centuries  when  they  broke  in  several  times,  and 
again  a  long  period  would  pass  without  a  visit;  but 
it  has  been  computed  that  there  has  been  an  average 
of  one  invasion  of  France  by  Germans  every  fifty 
years  for  fifteen  centuries — and  the  fathers  of  those 
who  fought  in  1914  fought  in  1870.  Had  it  not  been 
for  European  intervention,  Bismarck  would  have 
tried  it  again  in  1875,  because  he  was  not  satisfied 
with  his  job  five  years  earlier. 

Is  it  not  conceivable  that  England,  had  she  suf- 
fered from  a  habit  of  German  invasion  so  chronic 
as  this,  might  have  been  more  acutely  attentive  to 
the  warnings  which  Lord  Roberts  gave  her  through 
those  seven  years  before  1914?  Had  she  renounced 
a  Rhine  frontier  and  got  nothing  for  it,  would  she 
not  be  likely  to  want  an  army?  To  call  France  mili- 
taristic in  such  circumstances  looks  somewhat  like 
putting  the  cart  before  the  horse.  France  seems  to 
me  more  like  a  man  who  goes  about  his  premises 
armed  with  a  revolver  and  a  big  stick,  because  he 
has  lately  been  twice  sandbagged,  and  the  police  have 
all  gone  away. 

I  have  never  noticed  that  England,  or  America, 
or  any  nation  enjoyed  misrepresentation  and  abuse ; 
yet  they  are  calling  France  militaristic  and  accusing 
her  of  impatience  because  she  resents  it.  How  satis- 
factory to  Germany,  their  enemy,  this  attitude 
towards  their  friend  France  must  be!  How  per- 
fectly this  carries  out  Germany's  plan  that  the  Allies 
should  fall  apart ! 

Yes ;  France  is  being  accused  of  impatience,  and  I 


MILITARISTIC?  351 

am  afraid  that  it  is  true ;  the  marvel  is  that  she  has 
not  been  much  more  so.  Her  newspapers  are  intem- 
perate at  times — are  they  the  only  ones?  At  Wash- 
ington her  delegates  made  a  righteous  case  seem 
wrong  for  a  while,  and  were  surpassed  in  urbanity 
by  the  delegates  of  Great  Britain.  But  put  your- 
self in  her  place,  review  the  story  of  her  recent 
experience : 

One-fourteenth  of  her  territory  devastated;  four 
million  men  lost  in  killed,  maimed,  and  wounded;  a 
frontier  renounced  in  exchange  for  a  broken  promise ; 
the  German  damages  awarded  her  by  the  court  whit- 
tled down  under  British  pressure  while  the  German 
fleet  is  safe  in  the  British  pocket;  her  demand  at 
Washington  to  increase  her  own  greatly  reduced  sea 
power,  skilfully  distorted  by  the  press.  Her  naval 
plan  was  held  up  to  the  world  as  an  enormity,  when 
in  fact,  after  the  cobwebs  of  misrepresentation  had 
been  brushed  away,  what  she  asked  was  very  close 
indeed  to  what  Mr.  Hughes  proposed. 

By  the  reporters  she  was  made  to  appear  as  in- 
tending to  have  completed  ten  new  dreadnoughts  of 
35,000  tons  each  by  the  end  of  ten  years ;  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  they  were  to  come  at  the  end  of  twenty  years ; 
at  the  end  of  ten  she  would  have  just  two.  This  was 
the  first  distortion  by  the  press. 

France  had  built  no  new  ships  for  seven  years; 
she  had  turned  over  to  England,  for  war  purposes, 
what  vessels  she  possessed.  Some  had  been  lost,  and 
her  plan  when  truly  stated  came  to  nothing  more 
than  replacing  superannuated  tonnage  at  the  rate 
of  one  new  ship  in  two  years.  According  to  this 
plan,  she  would  have  at  the  end  of  the  "ten-year 
holiday,"  counting  six  old  ships  and  two  new  ones, 


352  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

200,000  tons  instead  of  175,000— only  25,000  more 
than  the  ratio  first  proposed ! 

Her  tonnage  in  existing  capital  ships  is  283,923; 
Great  Britain 's  is  1,031,000 ;  onrs  is  628,390.  France 
has  a  colonial  population  20  million  greater  than  at 
home ;  a  colonial  area  of  13  million  square  kilometres 
to  our  9  million;  she  has  a  coast  from  Belgium  to  the 
Bay  of  Biscay,  with  Ostend,  Calais,  Havre,  Cher- 
bourg, Brest,  St.  Nazaire,  Bordeaux,  among  the  har- 
bors which  she  must  defend,  and  Marseilles  on  the 
Mediterranean,  with  her  two  African  ports,  making 
a  triangle.  Since  the  begiiming  of  the  war  she  has 
built  5  submarines;  since  the  Armistice,  the  United 
States  has  built  44  and  is  building  38  more,  while 
Great  Britain  has  built  41.  To  put  it  in  another  way, 
our  total  tonnage  in  submarines  existing  and  to  be 
built  is  82,105;  Great  Britain's  is  82,464;  France 
has  42,949,  and  is  building  none,  while  we  propose 
to  build  38,  having  officially  declared  that  the  sub- 
marine is  a  defensive  weapon,  which  is  precisely 
what  France  has  contended. 

France  was  obliged  to  stand  in  a  false  light  dex- 
terously thrown  upon  her  during  the  Washington 
Conference,  to  hear  the  outcries  of  editors  based  upon 
distorted  news,  and  in  the  midst  of  this  din  a  con- 
gressman introducing  a  bill  demanding  immediate 
payment  of  money  owed  to  us  by  any  European 
nation  that  had  announced  its  intention  of  increasing 
its  navy.  Patience  is  always  desirable,  but  in  such 
circumstances  is  impatience  wholly  unnatural? 

So  much  for  the  charge  that  France  is  militaristic. 
Why  it  is  made  by  Germany  is  perfectly  plain ;  why 
it  is  made  by  England  is  not  so  plain,  because  the 
safety  of  France  from  Germany  is  just  as  important 


MILITARISTIC?  353 

to  England  now  as  it  was  in  1914 ;  but  as  the  general 
British  mind  could  not  take  in  what  Germany  was 
getting  ready  to  do  during  the  seven  years  before 
1914,  it  is  equally  unable  now  to  imagine  that  Ger- 
many will  do  anything  more.  The  war  is  over,  the 
German  sea  power  eliminated,  and  England  set  upon 
resuming  her  interrupted  trade.  The  French  Army 
seems  to  be  a  disadvantage  to  this,  and  consequently 
the  British  mind  does  not  see  why  France  should  be 
needing  something  that  is  unnecessary  to  England. 

"Why  does  she  not  disband  her  army  as  I  have 
done?  We  beat  Germany."  That  is  virtually  the 
thought  in  the  British  mind,  because  it  lacks  imagina- 
tion, and  without  this  you  cannot  put  yourself  in  the 
other  man 's  place ;  you  always  put  him  in  yours. 

Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  says  of  his  own  countrymen: 

"Most  Englishmen,  even  those  who  belong  to  what 
we  call  the  educated  classes,  still  do  not  think  sys- 
tematically at  all;  you  can  not  understand  England 
until  you  master  that  fact ;  their  ideas  are  in  slovenly 
detached  little  heaps,  they  think  in  ready-made 
phrases,  they  are  honestly  capable  therefore  of  the 
most  grotesque  inconsistencies.' ' 

Why  Americans  should  call  France  militaristic, 
and  why  a  congressman  should  offer  such  a  resolu- 
tion as  that  demanding  immediate  payment  of  money 
owed  to  us  by  any  European  power  intending  to  in- 
crease its  navy,  is  because  many  congressmen,  as 
well  as  many  of  those  who  elect  them,  are  in  the 
habit  of  thinking  that  they  know  all  about  everything 
when  they  know  nothing  of  anything. 


XXVII 

IDLE?     WELL  OFF? 

As  I  travelled  back  and  forth  through  the  land  of 
France,  after  two  years,  I  watched  the  winter  go, 
the  spring  come  and  go,  and  a  part  of  the  summer. 
What  I  saw  and  heard  of  France  in  her  great  emer- 
gency of  peace  through  those  months  would  fill  a  book 
— and  must  be  condensed  into  a  chapter.  The  mere 
aspect  of  things  was  often  so  contradictory  as  en- 
tirely to  explain  the  discrepancies  between  the  vari- 
ous reports  of  her  state  which  travellers  had  brought 
home;  all  depended  upon  where  they  had  gone  and 
how  long  they  had  stayed.  At  the  bottom  there  was 
no  contradiction,  everything  that  I  had  been  told 
was  true,  except  that  France  was  idle  and  that  she 
was  prosperous;  she  was  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other.  Perhaps  the  only  unchanged  things  that  I 
found  were  her  sane  and  gallant  spirit,  and  her  deep, 
unspoken  sadness. 

''See,  monsieur,"  said  Madeleine  my  chamber- 
maid, after  she  and  her  husband  and  I  had  come  to 
know  each  other  well,  "Nicholas  and  I,  we  are  work- 
ing and  saving  to  have  some  day  a  home  where  I 
can  take  care  of  him,  though  he  doesn't  know  that. 
You  did  not  see  him  before  the  four  years  of  prison 
with  the  Germans.  He  is  changed,  monsieur,  changed 
inside,  and  it  is  for  me  who  have  not  been  in  prison 
to  take  care  of  him. ' ' 

354 


IDLE?    WELL    OFF?  355 

I  saw  many  brave  women  and  broken  men  like  that, 
who  said  no  words  to  me  such  as  Madeleine's,  because 
we  had  not  gone  far  enough  in  friendship,  but  whose 
state  a  glance  or  a  whisper  would  reveal ;  at  Bleran- 
court,  where  American  ability  and  devotion  are  lift- 
ing to  health  the  crippled  communes  of  the  Aisne; 
at  Arras,  St.  Quentin,  Soissons,  Albert,  Bapaume, 
Keims,  Verdun,  Thiaucourt,  Pont-a-Mousson  and 
along  the  roads  between — where  did  I  not  meet  with 
this?  Many  of  the  men  lacked  an  arm,  or  a  leg,  or 
breathed  with  lungs  that  had  been  gassed ;  there  they 
were,  in  the  fields,  in  the  estaminets,  going  on  as 
well  as  they  could,  each  with  a  woman  working  hard 
all  day,  and  taking  care  of  her  man,  because,  mon- 
sieur, he  is  not  the  same  as  he  used  to  be ! 

I  saw  those  orchards  which  the  Germans  had  cut 
down,  still  kneeling  as  if  in  supplication,  and  some 
of  their  trees  like  true  French  trees  were  trying  to 
go  on  when  April  came;  a  rag  of  bark  and  wood 
still  tied  them  to  their  roots,  and  through  this  still 
flowed  the  sap,  breaking  into  white  blossoms  that 
leaned  and  bowed  close  to  the  ground. 

At  Peronne  the  German  placard,  "nicht  argern 
nur  wundern, ' '  was  gone ;  Peronne  had  manufactured 
sugar,  and  while  she  waited  for  the  rebuilding  of  her 
destroyed  machinery  to  resume  her  ancient  industry, 
she  was  by  no  means  idle.  She  was  sowing  wheat  in 
her  reclaimed  fields,  and  barley,  and  was  raising  hay. 
In  centuries  past  she  had  been  a  storm-centre  of  his- 
tory, and  had  counted  many  beautiful  old  buildings 
which  I  had  seen  shattered  and  demolished  upon  my 
last  visit.  She  was  but  a  tomb  of  beauty  now.  She 
recalled  the  mining  camps  of  the  eighties  in  our  West. 
Scarce  any  movement  had  been  in  her  wasted  streets 


356  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

in  1919 ;  they  were  wasted  still,  raw,  without  order, 
something  like  a  face  that  needs  shaving,  but  life 
was  bustling  in  them.  The  stumps  of  the  dead  trees, 
with  glaring  new  board  shacks  scattered  like  litters 
of  boxes  among  them,  might  have  been  Montana 
forests  cut  down  to  make  way  for  civilization.  Here 
was  a  cinema  in  a  tent;  there  was  a  pharmacy  in  a 
shack;  there  in  another  was  a  shop  with  a  proud 
name  like  Grand  Magazin  de  Paris,  with  boots  and 
buttons  and  spoons  and  shovels  and  nearly  every- 
thing else  for  sale;  long  new  wooden  barracks  like 
bowling  alleys  housed  the  homeless  people  of  Pe- 
ronne;  this  once  symmetric  and  historic  town  was 
now  as  ugly  and  shapeless  as  any  six  months  old 
place  I  had  ever  seen  in  our  Rocky  Mountains ;  and 
to  look  at  it  and  reflect  that  this  identity  of  aspect 
came  from  destruction  in  one  case  and  advance  in 
the  other,  was  strange  and  sad. 

The  woman  who  kept  an  estaminet  here  where  I 
went  to  drink  coffee  and  get  warm,  was  as  lively  and 
competent  as  my  friend  Madeleine. 

"  Until  '16  I  stayed  here  in  Peronne,  monsieur, 
and  then  I  had  to  go  to  Amiens.  At  Amiens  they 
complain  too  much.  We  have  suffered  more  here, 
do  you  not  think?" 

"I  certainly  do." 

"As  you  see,  this  cafe  is  made  of  wood — double 
planks  with  paper.  And  the  bedroom  is  very  cold, 
constructed  by  my  husband.  When  the  Boches  were 
here  they  made  men  and  women  and  young  girls 
work  beneath  the  stick.  There  are  Boches  and 
Boches;  but  you  know,  the  best  of  them  don't  come 
high." 

The  startling  resemblance  of  these  French  towns 


IDLE?    WELL    OFF?  357 

that  were  being  built  again  to  those  camps  in  our 
West  was  a  common  sight  which  met  me  all  through 
the  devastated  regions.  In  their  ruins  they  had  been 
noble  and  pitiful,  and  now  this  dignity  was  gone,  and 
the  stage  through  which  they  were  passing  wore  a 
degraded  and  sordid  appearance,  where  the  beauty 
which  had  been  blasted  away  was  replaced  by  un- 
sightliness.  Yet  even  this  disorderly  make-shift  and 
improvisation  of  existence  had  been  touched  with 
grace  already  by  the  French  hand.  Amid  the  raw 
square  shacks  and  the  rusted  sheets  of  corrugated 
iron  that  arched  the  beds  and  kitchens  of  these  en- 
camped townsfolk,  flowers,  blue  and  white  and  pink, 
would  be  growing  along  some  sill  in  a  box,  or  in  the 
earth  of  some  tended  corner,  and  new-washed  cur- 
tains veiled  the  little  windows  with  the  caress  of 
neatness. 

At  Cuisy-en-Almont,  I  passed  a  new  house  two 
stories  high,  and  very  pretty,  which  a  man  and  his 
two  daughters  had  built  entirely  with  their  own 
hands.  In  certain  of  the  larger  towns,  such  as  Sois- 
sons,  those  residents  who  had  been  well-to-do  and 
had  some  money  still,  were  not  waiting  for  help 
from  the  government  to  rebuild  their  houses;  and 
wherever  this  was  the  case,  the  new  residences  stood 
out  very  plainly  among  the  general  ruins.  They  were 
apt  to  have  red  roofs,  or  to  be  of  brick,  and  were 
often  ugly  in  shape ;  and  before  long  it  became  easy 
to  judge  from  a  distant  sight  of  any  village  how  far 
its  restoration  had  progressed,  so  very  marked  and 
so  very  small  in  amount  was  the  new  construction 
amid  the  old  destruction.  Help  from  the  government 
came,  but  it  had  to  come  slowly,  and  by  instalments. 
If  a  destroyed  house  had  been  worth  25,000  francs  in 


358  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

1914,  to  rebuild  it  in  1919  would  cost  three  or  four 
times  as  much,  according  to  the  fluctuations  in  the 
price  of  material.  Its  owner  would  be  given  its  value, 
in  1914,  as  damages  for  his  loss,  and  supplementary 
sums  to  cover  the  excess  price  of  replacing  it.  But  to 
establish  his  claim  to  any  of  these  subsidies,  he  must 
return  to  the  place  where  he  had  lived  and  stay  there, 
or  within  a  radius  of  50  kilometres.  Many  were  liv- 
ing in  any  fragment  of  a  house  that  they  could  find, 
and  many  in  holes,  asking  merely  for  somewhere  to 
come  back  to  for  rest  after  each  day's  work.  Many 
villages  from  which  the  war  had  swept  all  life  were 
still  lifeless  and  in  dust,  still  totally  dead,  and  some 
of  these  would  never  be  alive  again;  others  were  a 
quarter  alive,  or  half;  while  some  towns,  less  de- 
stroyed and  with  more  resources  of  food  and  shelter, 
were  harboring  not  only  their  own  population,  but 
refugees  also;  Arras,  for  example,  had  numbered 
25,000  people  before  the  war,  and  now  had  50,000. 
But  Arras,  like  other  towns  where  I  ate  or  slept, 
showed  the  shock  of  shells  not  only  out-of-doors, 
where  the  cathedral  and  Hotel  de  Ville  had  been 
purposely  destroyed,  and  many  streets  were  walled 
by  hollow  ruins,  but  indoors  too,  where  big  holes 
were  in  the  ceiling  of  one's  bedroom  and  big  cracks 
in  the  mirrors  Of  the  restaurant.  I  walked  about  in 
Lens,  where  the  water  was  gushing  copiously  out  of 
the  vent  as  they  pumped  it  from  the  flooded  mines, 
and  where  1,000  houses  had  been  built  of  the  12,000 
that  were  needed,  and  6,000  men  were  now  working. 
These  mines  were  spending  a  million  francs  a  day, 
in  a  year  it  was  expected  to  be  many  times  that  sum, 
and  they  were  making  a  loan  of  20  milliards  to  cover 
their  coming  expenses.     At  Ronssoy,  north  of  St. 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  359 

Quentin,  there  was  a  graveyard  where  the  Germans 
had  emptied  the  bones  from  all  coffins  of  lead,  of 
which  metal  they  stood  in  need.  They  were  as  prac- 
tical with  their  own  dead.  I  heard  that  English  pris- 
oners saw  these  baled  in  wire,  six  naked  corpses  to 
a  bale,  for  shipment  to  various  reduction  plants. 
They  were  kept  away  from  those  factories,  but  they 
could  smell  them. 

The  aspect  of  the  French  country  varied  as  greatly 
as  that  of  the  towns,  but  it  had  recovered  in  far 
greater  proportion.  The  first  labor  had  been  spent 
upon  the  more  fertile  and  valuable  areas,  and  there 
were  other  wide  stretches  where  nothing  as  yet  had 
been  done  at  all.  Miles  of  shell  holes  and  barbed 
wire  that  I  had  seen  in  1919  were  now  smoothed  and 
plowed,  waiting  for  the  spring;  as  the  season  ad- 
vanced and  I  passed  them  several  times  again,  I  saw 
these  acres  rise  into  life  and  become  a  waving  sea 
of  crops.  Nothing  among  or  near  them  would  have 
led  a  traveller  to  suspect  that  they  had  been  a  wilder- 
ness, two  years  ago,  except  the  large  coils  of  barbed 
wire  which  had  been  removed  from  them,  and  often 
lay  piled  along  the  roads.  These  roads  ran  through 
other  miles  where  the  wire  and  the  shells  and  the 
holes  still  spread  across  the  desolate  surface,  over 
which  no  change  had  come  save  a  growth  of  rank 
weeds  and  grass,  robbing  this  land  of  its  tragic 
appearance  without  redeeming  it  from  its  barrenness. 
So  it  was  by  Beaumont  Hamel,  on  that  road  beyond 
Mailly-Maillet  towards  Arras.  Not  even  the  road 
had  been  there  in  April  1919,  and  now  it  was  the 
only  thing  there.  It  was  worse  beyond  Bethune  and 
Neuve  Chapelle ;  indeed,  in  that  direction,  there  was 
still  almost  perfect  desolation  all  the  way  through 


360  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Armentieres  and  Messines  to  Ypres  and  the  Menin 
road  and  the  ridge  of  Paschendael.  Towns  and  lands 
alike  still  lay  in  wreck  and  obliteration  unredeemed, 
not  a  fragment  seemed  to  have  been  touched  among 
the  mounds  and  the  holes  and  the  wire;  along  the 
main  road  I  saw  a  thighbone  sticking  out  of  a  pool. 
This  part  of  the  battle-ground  was  one  of  the  few 
that  remained  where  it  was  still  difficult  to  find  one's 
way;  we  were  turned  back  twice,  and  once  had  to 
make  a  long  detour  in  order  to  gain  a  road  that  was 
open.  This  happened  to  me  in  only  one  other  place, 
between  the  Aisne  and  the  Chemin  des  Dames; 
through  all  my  other  journeys,  although  one  came 
at  times  to  roads  that  were  still  impassable,  there 
were  other  roads  open  near  at  hand;  progress  had 
virtually  ceased  to  be  the  picking  out  from  many 
ways  the  only  one  not  closed,  and  had  become  the 
avoiding  among  many  ways  the  only  one  not  open. 
France  had  re-established  her  channels  of  communi- 
cation in  a  very  large  measure,  both  her  thorough- 
fares and  her  railroads.  These  latter  on  their  main 
lines  were  nearly  normal  in  the  service  of  their  trains, 
and  the  speed,  though  still  not  as  fast  as  it  had  been 
before  the  war,  had  decidedly  increased.  It  was  only 
a  certain  small  number  of  branch  lines  that  were 
still  unopened. 

While  the  various  voices  were  busy  reporting  that 
France  was  not  trying  to  pick  herself  up,  but  was 
lying  in  the  ground,  supinely  waiting  until  Germany 
should  pay  her  reparations,  this  is  what  I  found  she 
had  accomplished  by  January  1st,  1921 : 

Of  the  277  million  cubic  metres  of  trenches  to 
refill,  219  million  had  been  done ;  of  the  310  million 
square  metres  of  barbed  wire  to  uproot  and  remove, 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  361 

249  million  had  been  done ;  of  the  3  million  8  hundred 
thousand  devastated  hectares  to  be  brought  back  to 
safety  and  fertility,  3  million  four  hundred  and  fif- 
teen thousand  had  been  purged  of  live  shells  and 
projectiles,  and  3  million  126  thousand  had  been  made 
level  and  normal.    Or,  to  put  it  in  another  way — 

Of   shells  removed 89% 

Of  land  levelled 82.2% 

Of  barbed  wire  removed 80.1% 

Of  trenches  filled 79% 

Of  wreckage  cleared  away   60% 

in  18  months,  with  a  male  population  reduced  by  4 
million,  and  a  debt  increased  tenfold.    And  again — 

Of  1,757,000  hectares  destroyed,  1,669,000  were  levelled, 
1,405,000  were  cultivated,  1,000,000  were  sown. 

The  French  harvest  in  1919  had  been  24%  of  the 
harvest  before  the  war;  in  1920  it  was  50%. 
By  January  1st,  1921 — 

334,000  hectares  were  sown  in  hay. 


304,000 

i  i 

1 1 

< 

"  wheat. 

57,000 

1 1 

i  < 

i  < 

"  beets. 

39,000 

1 1 

a 

(« 

"  rye. 

37,000 

< « 

<« 

1 1 

"  barley. 

150,000 

(< 

<  < 

i< 

"   other  crops. 

Of  main  line  railroads  restored 96.6% 

"  local  railroads 28% 

"  canals  and  navigable  streams 93% 

1 '   engineering  works   70% 

"  roads  , , 64.7%: 

Three  thousand  six  hundred  and  three  tunnels  and 
bridges  had  been  destroyed,  one  thousand  four  hun- 
dred and  ninety-eight  remained  to  be  repaired. 


362  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

That  is  a  part  of  what  idle  France  had  been  doing 
in  18  months— from  the  spring  of  1919,  when  she 
was  able  to  begin  work,  until  January  1st,  1921 ;  and 
here  is  more  of  it: 

In  November  1918,  twenty  thousand  five  hundred 
of  her  manufactories  were  paralyzed,  either  knocked 
down  and  without  machinery,  or  left  standing  without 
machinery.  After  18  months,  18%  of  these  were 
going  concerns,  26%  in  partial  activity;  but  56% 
were  still  stationary.  The  German  work  of  destruc- 
tion and  robbery  could  not  be  repaired  very  rapidly, 
and  so,  while  German  factories  were  whirling  full 
speed  at  night  as  well  as  in  the  day,  earning  those 
30  and  40  per  cent,  dividends,  more  than  half  the 
industry  of  France  was  still  a  total  wreck. 

But  it  was  in  making  new  houses  for  her  homeless 
millions  that  France  was  most  behind.  She  had  so 
little  money  to  spend  at  all,  that  she  devoted  most 
of  it  to  what  would  immediately  increase  her  income 
with  the  least  outlay;  therefore  her  first  care  had 
to  be  for  her  fields  and  her  channels  of  communica- 
tion. Meanwhile,  those  homeless  French  lived  near 
their  place  of  work  in  any  shelter  that  could  be  found 
or  improvised.  In  their  anxiety  to  return  to  their 
homes  and  reclaim  their  land  they  came  back  from 
their  exile  in  a  stream  with  which  no  reconstruction 
of  the  demolished  farms  and  villages  could  keep 
pace;  especially  in  a  country  that  had  lost  one-fifth 
of  its  revenue,  and  had  been  spending  9  billion  francs 
a  year  in  self-defence.  This  outstripping  of  the 
sheltering  capacity  in  the  devastated  regions  by  the 
returning  peasants  caused  a  very  heavy  shortage  of 
every  kind  of  habitation,  adequate  and  inadequate. 
Five  hundred  and  ninety  thousand  dwellings  had  been 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  363 

wholly  or  partially  destroyed — 293,000  were  wiped 
out,  the  remainder  left  in  various  stages  of  ruin. 
By  January  1921,  40,000  of  these  were  rebuilt,  280,- 
000  made  partly  habitable,  and  to  this  housing  ca- 
pacity 40,000  barracks,  60,000  shacks,  and  29,000 
shelters  of  other  substances  had  been  added ;  this  had 
to  accommodate  one  million  seven  hundred  thousand 
people.  The  total  insufficiency  of  housing  in  ratio 
to  the  housed  was  24% ;  of  repaired  or  provisional 
houses  in  ratio  to  the  population  in  1914,  33.1% ; 
the  insufficiency  of  normal  houses,  96%.  Since  Jan- 
uary 1921,  the  energy  of  France  in  restoring  herself 
has  never  flagged;  today  more  than  six-sevenths  of 
her  schools  are  reopened,  nearly  half  of  her  destroyed 
homes  are  permanently  or  temporarily  repaired, 
more  than  three-quarters  of  her  productive  soil  has 
been  reclaimed.  This  she  has  accomplished  in  spite 
of  having  been  compelled  to  buy  from  abroad  much 
wheat,  sugar,  coal,  and  other  necessaries  which  she 
had  produced  at  home  before  the  Germans  destroyed 
her  machinery  and  sources  of  production.  To  re- 
build the  destroyed  areas,  the  bridges,  roads,  rail- 
ways, telegraphs,  to  set  industries,  commerce,  farm- 
ers on  their  feet,  France  up  to  the  year  1922  had 
devoted  fifty-six  billion  francs  since  the  Armistice. 

Yet  Germans  have  intimated,  and  others  have 
echoed  the  intimation,  that  France  has  been  lying 
idle,  waiting  for  Germany  to  pay  the  reparations! 
It  is  singular  that  Germany  should  expect  such  a 
tale  to  be  believed,  because  the  idea  that  any  nation 
which  had  to  go  on  living  should  voluntarily  expire 
makes  a  very  feeble  appeal  to  human  reason;  more 
singular  still  is  it  that  any  one  should  have  actually 
believed  it.    It  is  somewhat  as  if  a  man  who  had 


364  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

been  crushed  by  his  neighbor's  automobile  should 
wait  to  be  paid  the  damages  before  he  went  to  a 
hospital.  Germany  has  given  the  world  another  sug- 
gestion about  France,  certainly  more  plausible  on 
its  face.  France  refused  Germany's  offer  to  send 
workmen  and  rebuild  her  ruins  for  her;  had  she 
accepted  this  offer,  says  Germany,  France  would  by 
now  be  rebuilt.  Without  taking  into  consideration 
the  problem  of  feeding  a  large  army  of  strangers 
when  food  was  scarce  and  expensive,  and  also  the 
feelings  of  the  French  at  having  to  see  again  and 
to  live  side  by  side  with  those  who  had  wrecked  their 
homes,  killed  their  brothers,  and  debauched  their 
sisters,  there  is  something  else ;  with  that  offer  which 
Germany  made  went  stipulations  about  the  comfort 
and  food  and  general  well-being  of  her  workmen, 
while  they  should  be  in  France,  which  it  would  have 
been  perfectly  impossible  to  meet,  and  the  Germans 
knew  it.  They  did  not  intend  that  France  should 
accept  their  offer,  any  more  than  they  had  intended 
on  July  23d,  1914,  that  Serbia  should  accept  Aus- 
tria's ultimatum.  Acceptance  of  the  scheme  would 
have  flung  Germany  into  the  same  flurry  of  indigna- 
tion at  the  "duplicity"  of  France  that  they  impro- 
vised when  Serbia  took  them  aback  by  accepting  the 
ultimatum.  The  offer  was  what  we  call  a  "frame- 
up,"  something  to  be  used  for  effect,  quite  like  the 
incident  of  Casablanca  in  1907.  That  was  a  "cause 
of  war"  with  France  which  Germany  had  been  care- 
fully engineering.  Germans  with  a  past,  who  had 
enlisted  in  France 's  Foreign  Legion,  like  many  others 
with  a  past,  were  induced  by  German  secret  agents 
to  desert,  and  were  to  be  represented  to  the  world 
as  being  worthy  subjects  of  the  Kaiser,  whom  the 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  365 

French  Army  had  kidnapped  and  enslaved.  The 
trick  was  played  prematurely,  before  the  Kaiser  felt 
ready  to  light;  and  he  backed  down  in  the  face  of 
the  energetic  position  then  taken  by  M.  Clemenceau, 
who  was  President  of  the  Council. 

"Born  to  lie,"  wrote  the  Roman  general  in  the 
first  century,  and  this  pattern  running  through  the 
German  character  shows  no  sign  of  fading  out,  after 
two  thousand  years.  Its  color  has  glowed  brightly 
whenever,  after  some  conference  at  which  Germany 
has  asseverated  to  the  Allies  that  it  is  out  of  her 
power  to  pay  her  reparation,  they  have  taken,  or 
have  even  threatened  to  take,  steps  to  enforce  pay- 
ment under  the  sanctions  of  the  Treaty  of  Versailles, 
the  cash  has  been  forthcoming  at  once. 

"You  have  answered  all  sorts  of  questions,"  I  said 
to  a  member  of  the  French  Government,  "and  now 
I  am  going  to  ask  you  one  more — and  even  then  it 
may  be  that  I  shall  not  have  finished ! ' ' 

He  bowed.  "You  know  I  am  always  at  your 
service. ' ' 

"It  is  this:  how  about  your  taxes?" 

"That  is  our  weak  point,"  he  answered  with  im- 
mediate frankness.  "We  have  not  been  able  to  col- 
lect our  tax  from  the  profiteers  as  successfully  as 
England  or  yourselves.  But  Germany  has  this  same 
weak  point,  as  well  as  a  number  of  others.  Don't 
forget  that!" 

"I  don't!" 

"And  that  she  is  the  culprit  while  we  are  her 
victims. ' ' 

"No  American  who  has  seen  your  devastated  re- 
gions will  forget  that." 

"Also,  it  is  not  that  we  are  conniving  with  our 


366  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

great  industrials,  that  they  may  escape  the  tax  and 
hide  their  profits  in  foreign  investments.  That  is 
the  second  deep  moral  difference  between  Germany 
and  ourselves  in  this  matter  of  taxes.  First,  she  is 
the  guilty  debtor,  we  the  injured  creditor;  second, 
she  deliberately  winks  at  the  diversion  of  large  sums 
of  money  into  these  foreign  investments,  which  by 
the  treaty  should  go  to  us  for  reparation.  She 
violates  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  every  day.  With 
us  it  is  inefficiency.  We  are  violating  no  treaty,  and 
it  is  only  we  who  suffer  from  our  own — well,  call 
it  timidity,  if  you  like.  The  French  people  hate  direct 
taxation,  and  ministers  fear  to  push  them  too  far. 
Our  leaders,  like  yours,  I  fancy,  find  their  position 
difficult  when  it  comes  to  a  clash  between  domestic 
and  foreign  policies." 

" England  has  the  same  embarrassment,"  I  said. 

"But  not  Germany,"  he  answered.  " Whatever  it 
looks  like  on  the  surface,  they  stand  together  at  bot- 
tom, because  they  are  just  as  much  against  the  world 
in  peace  as  they  were  in  the  war,  and  this  keeps  them 
unified.  Yes,  I  admit  that  we  fall  short  of  you  in 
the  matter  of  taxes.  Only  half  a  million  Frenchmen 
paid  a  direct  income  tax  in  1920,  when  about  four 
million  ought  to  have  paid.  But  who  does  that  hurt 
except  ourselves?  And  in  spite  of  it,  we  have  not 
remained  at  a  standstill. ' ' 

"I  am  very  well  aware  of  that!"  I  exclaimed. 

1  'Yes;  but  do  you  know  that  our  exports  have 
increased  some  16  per  cent,  over  last  year,  while  our 
imports  have  decreased  45  per  cent.  1  That  will  come 
to  an  export  balance  of  nearly  a  billion  francs  against 
an  import  balance  of  almost  28  billion  last  year.  And 
by  our  bookkeeping  we  have  continued  so  far  to  keep 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  367 

our  heads  above  bankruptcy.  Our  public  debt 
amounts  to — in  dollars — $1212  per  capita  against 
England's  $875  and  yours  of  $240.  But  of  this  debt 
of  ours — about  forty-eight  billion  and  a  half  dollars 
— only  8.4  per  cent,  is  external  debt.  And — have  no 
fear! — France  will  meet  her  obligations.  It  is  not 
in  her  tradition  to  repudiate.  Only — may  we  not  have 
time  to  build  ourselves  up  before  paying?  Who  is 
the  real  debtor — France,  or  the  one  who  forced  us 
all  to  spend  these  billions  to  save  our  liberty?  And 
one  word  more,  monsieur " 

He  paused  a  moment,  as  if  to  be  able  to  continue 
his  calm  manner  and  speech : 

"Do  you  think  if  Germany  were  just  across  the 
river  from  certain  bankers  and  politicians,  that  they 
would  be  quite  so  ready  to  invite  us  all  to  deny  our- 
selves for  her  sake?" 

" Don't  let  them  make  you  give  up  your  army!" 
said  I,  "whatever  else  you  may  have  to  deny  your- 
selves." 

' '  Oh,  we  shall  keep  our  army !  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
is  not  our  Prime  Minister,  you  know." 

"He  almost  seems  so,  at  times,"  I  ventured  to 
murmur. 

He  let  this  go.  "They  tell  us,  monsieur,  that  we 
are  asking  from  Germany  more  than  the  true  price 
of  our  damage.  That  is  very  easy  for  financiers  to 
say,  but  not  so  easy  to  prove  when  exchange  is  in 
such  rapid  and  constant  fluctuation  that  what  we 
have  correctly  calculated  on  Monday  will  have  be- 
come false  on  Tuesday.  Let  Germany  pay  us  until 
our  regions  that  she  devastated  are  rebuilt,  and  then 
we  will  excuse  her  whatever  excess  we  asked." 

"Nobody  has  ever  suggested  that,"  I  said. 


368  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"Is  it  not  perfectly  simple  and  practical? " 
1 '  Perfectly.    But  they  say  that  Germany  can  never 
pay  the  true  cost  of  rebuilding." 

1  'And  in  reply  to  that  I  say,  monsieur,  that  when 
France,  short  of  men,  short  of  money,  and  with  her 
industries  paralyzed  as  you  have  seen,  has  been  able 
in  two  years  to  rebuild  herself  in  the  manner  that 
you  have  also  seen,  that  Germany,  who  has  not  a 
wheel  cracked  in  her  vast  industrial  machine,  can 
pay  perfectly  well,  and  in  a  shorter  time  than  they 
have  allowed  her.  No,  monsieur!  This  is  how  it 
is:  Either  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  his  friends  know 
better,  or  they  do  not;  either  they  understand  Ger- 
many, or  they  do  not.  It  comes  to  the  same  thing  in 
result — that  they  are  the  best  friends  that  Germany 
has,  and  are  aiding  her  in  her  plan  which  France 
clearly  perceives.  That  plan  is  to  delay  her  pay- 
ments and  so  compel  us,  who  can  not  go  on  living 
without  a  roof  over  our  heads,  to  pay  for  the  new 
roof  ourselves — and  with  the  generous  help  that  you 
and  other  friends  are  sending  us.  Germany  intends 
the  Allies  to  heal  their  own  wounds — and  to  deal 
them  some  new  ones,  perhaps,  before  the  old  ones 
are  cured.  Meanwhile,  her  democratic  workmen  are 
very  respectful  to  those  above  them.  When  they 
declined  to  launch  for  Monsieur  Stinnes  his  new 
ship  the  von  Tirpitz  because  of  its  name,  he  dismissed 
3,000  of  them.  Since  that  they  have  launched  the 
Hindenburg  and  the  Ludendorff  for  him  with  the 
most  correct  and  obliging  politeness." 

I  slept  two  nights  among  the  ruins  in  the  depart- 
ment of  the  Aisne,  whence  the  violence  of  war  had 
scarcely  been  absent  at  all  during  the  four  years. 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  369 

In  that  region,  out  of  841  communes,  814  had  been 
demolished;  of  590,000  people,  290,000  had  fled;  of 
736,000  hectares,  730,000  had  been  plowed  up  by 
projectiles ;  of  10,000  kilometres  of  road  6,000  were 
still  impassable,  and  to  rebuild  them  one  million 
seven  hundred  thousand  tons  of  stone  would  be  re- 
quired. Of  489  kilometres  of  main  line  railroads, 
489 — the  whole — had  been  destroyed,  and  of  the  648 
kilometres  of  branch  lines,  609  had  been  destroyed. 
The  little  town  of  Coucy-le-Chateau — and  nowhere 
in  France  was  there  a  gem  of  more  exquisite  beauty 
— stood  on  its  hill  as  silent  and  dead  as  Herculaneum, 
destroyed  by  no  volcano,  but  by  the  eruption  of 
wanton,  baffled  German  hate. 

At  Anizy-le-Chateau  on  the  Sunday  that  I  spent 
in  this  region,  the  croix-de-guerre  was  given  to  21 
of  the  devastated  communes  by  Marshal  Fayolle. 
The  people  came  from  their  own  ruins  through  the 
dead  forests  to  the  ruins  of  Anizy,  and  assembled 
round  a  platform  in  the  sunlight  to  listen  to  the 
speeches.  These  were  eloquent  and  moving,  made 
by  prominent  men  who  spoke  to  the  bereaved  and 
hard-working  people  of  their  beloved  France.  Bright 
flags  covered  the  little  broken  place,  hanging  quietly 
in  the  warm  and  motionless  air.  Beyond  these  and 
across  the  tiny  stream,  the  Ailette,  rose  the  forest  of 
Pinon,  grim  and  leafless,  never  to  be  green  again, 
every  tree  a  mere  dead  spike  above  the  marshy  green 
of  the  new  grass  by  the  river.  Twenty  thousand 
dead  had  been  in  the  forest  of  Pinon  in  September 
1918.  The  great  silence  was  living  here  still;  but 
as  those  Frenchmen  spoke  of  France  and  I  listened 
to  the  solemn  and  passionate  devotion  of  their  words, 
and  looked  at  the  forest  beyond,  it  was  easy  to  im- 


370  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

agine  unheard  music  floating  from  the  depths;  the 
songs  of  the  mothers  bidding  their  dead  sons  to  sleep 
and  dream  proud  dreams  because  they  lay  in  the 
bosom  of  their  country  that  they  had  saved;  the 
songs  of  young  mothers  over  their  cradles,  bidding 
their  new-born  to  sleep  and  dream  proud  dreams 
because  they  would  in  their  turn  live  for  France  and, 
if  she  asked  them,  die  for  her.  The  heart  of  the 
ceremony  was  the  conferring  of  the  war  cross  to 
each  one  who  stood  forth  to  represent  his  commune. 
Its  name  would  be  called  from  the  roll,  and  at  this 
the  representative  approached  Marshal  Fayolle. 
Then  the  roll  of  the  commune 's  dead  would  be  called, 
name  after  name;  and  after  each  came  the  answer: 

" Jules  Touzet." 

"Mort  pour  la  France." 

"Leon  Jourdois." 

"Mort  pour  la  France." 

"Andre  Renard." 

"Mort  pour  la  France." 

Always  the  same  reply,  "dead  for  France,"  com- 
mune after  commune,  until  all  the  twenty-one  had 
been  decorated  with  the  cross  through  their  repre- 
sentative by  Marshal  Fayolle.  Not  only  did  it  not 
seem  long,  but  time  ceased  to  be,  the  sacredness  of 
it  was  a  moment  of  eternity ;  and  through  it  sounded 
the  unheard  music  from  the  forest  of  Pinon,  and  it 
seemed  as  if  the  whole  company  were  sitting  in  the 
cathedral  of  Reims,  invisible,  a  wreck  no  longer,  made 
whole  and  rising  glorious  beyond  the  grave. 

The  people  of  the  communes  had  wished  so  much 
to  make  the  marshal  and  all  their  guests  feel  that 
they  were  welcome,  that  they  had  spent  themselves 
to  provide,  not  a  meal,  but  a  feast.    They  had  done 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  371 

far  more  than  was  needed,  they  had  determined  that 
none  of  their  poverty  which  could  be  hidden  should 
be  seen  today ;  and  their  endless  bill-of-f are,  printed 
with  such  zest,  contained  both  a  smile  and  a  heart- 
break. 

It  had  been  the  plan  of  the  ministering  spirit  who 
presides  over  the  American  Relief  of  this  department 
to  reduce  and  simplify,  for  the  sake  of  expense,  each 
detail  of  help  that  should  cease  to  be  needed.  _  It 
had  been  hoped  that  after  two  years  the  surgical 
help  might  cease.  Nothing  else  could ;  not  the  little 
shacks  for  school  children;  not  the  little  new  brick 
libraries  scattered  through  the  wasted  region;  not 
the  automobile  service,  or  the  assembly  rooms  where 
the  people  came  at  night  to  see  moving  pictures,  or 
the  dispensary,  or  the  dentist,  nothing  that  meant 
help  to  work,  or  to  instruct,  or  to  amuse,  or  to  keep 
well;  but  war  wounds  had  either  got  well  or  had 
been  placed  in  the  care  of  more  central  organizations. 
Nevertheless,  surgical  equipment  had  to  be  continued 
by  the  American  Relief  in  the  Aisne,  because  of  the 
bombs  that  were  being  removed  from  the  fields,  the 
unexploded  hand  grenades.  A  special  force  was 
being  employed  all  through  the  devastated  regions 
to  find  and  take  away  these  live  shells.  In  the  de- 
partment of  the  Aisne,  648  men  had  been  doing  this 
work  in  1920,  of  whom  100  had  been  killed  and  38 
wounded.  The  French  shells  were  more  dangerous 
than  the  German  on  account  of  their  mechanism; 
they  had  a  spring  which  caused  the  fuse  to  ignite. 
In  time  and  under  exposure,  this  spring  became  rusty, 
so  that  sometimes  the  lightest  touch,  or  even  a  jar 
caused  by  the  earth  pressing  against  it  where  a  man 
had  set  his  foot,  would  snap  it,  and  the  man  might 


372  NEIGHBORS    HENCEFORTH 

lose  a  leg,  or  be  blown  to  atoms.  Consequently  the 
surgical  equipment  had  to  be  retained. 

In  the  windows  and  on  the  counters  of  the  book- 
shops all  over  France  were  the  signs  of  a  great 
change.  Innumerable  pamphlets  and  periodicals 
were  now  published  to  teach  and  encourage  out-of- 
door  competitive  sports.  One  of  these  was  called, 
"How  to  become  a  good  player  of  Football  Asso- 
ciation," another,  "Football  Rugby,"  another 
1 '  Feminine  Basket  Ball. ' '  These  were  but  a  few  that 
I  noticed.  Not  one  of  these  publications  had  I  ever 
seen  before,  and  until  the  war  the  French  had  paid 
but  scant  attention  to  the  games  of  England  and 
America.  Competitive  sport  had  not  been  a  habit 
or  a  tradition  with  them,  and  to  this  fact  one  weak- 
ness in  the  national  character  may  be  ascribed — the 
absence  of  the  instinct  of  team-work,  of  co-operation, 
straight  through  the  entire  social  and  economic  struc- 
ture of  the  country. 

Two  officers,  a  Frenchman  and  an  American,  were 
talking  together  as  they  watched  a  line  of  our  dough- 
boys standing  in  a  heavy  rain  growing  wetter  and 
wetter,  each  soldier  patiently  waiting  his  turn  to 
have  his  supper  handed  to  him.  This  astonished  the 
Frenchman. 

"Are  your  men  willing  to  keep  in  line  like  that?" 
he  asked  the  American. 

"Yes.    Why  not?" 

"French  soldiers  would  not  endure  that  deluge  of 
rain.    They  would  all  crowd  each  other  to  get  first. ' ' 

What  they  saw  of  the  British  and  of  ourselves 
during  the  war,  of  the  games  we  played,  of  our  gen- 
erally athletic  habit,  has  evidently  made  a  deep  im- 
pression upon  the  French.     They  constantly  spoke 


IDLE?    WELL    OFF?  373 

to  me  of  the  size  of  our  men,  and  of  their  broad 
shoulders.  It  has  not  stopped  there,  they  have  done 
more  than  talk  about  it;  broad  shoulders  and  the 
instinct  of  team-work  and  fair  play  have  seemed  to 
them  something  worth  acquiring,  and  they  have  set 
about  doing  this  systematically.  Football  has  been 
made  compulsory  in  the  French  Army.  "When  the 
government  is  able  to  pay  Soissons  the  money  which 
rebuilding  will  cost,  it  will  also  return  to  the  Ameri- 
can Relief  in  the  department  of  the  Aisne  their  outlay 
in  developing  the  play  grounds  at  Soissons  and  at 
Reims.  The  67th  regiment  was  stationed  there  at 
the  time  of  my  visit,  and  its  team  played  a  game  of 
basket  ball  with  a  team  from  Couy— a  neighboring 
village  of  which  not  one  stone  is  left  upon  another. 
The  score  stood  9  to  9  close  to  the  finish,  when  the 
soldiers  in  the  Couy  team  made  a  desperate  rally — 
and  won. 

''What  made  you  play  so  hard  just  then?"  an 
American  asked  them. 

"Because,  if  we  won,  each  of  us  was  to  get  a  per- 
mission of  forty-eight  hours. ' ' 

The  ministering  spirit  of  the  American  Relief 
found  at  first  a  grave  obstacle  in  the  absence  of  all 
sense  of  co-operation,  or  wish  for  it,  among  the 
peasants.  They  had  always  done  their  own  work, 
they  had  no  desire  to  do  their  neighbor's.  But 
France  was  too  short-handed  now  for  such  indi- 
vidualism; if  the  fields  were  to  be  reclaimed,  if  the 
crops  were  to  be  sown,  the  farmers  must  come  to 
each  other 's  help,  and  this  they  were  learning  to  do. 
They  were  also  adjusting  themselves  to  waiting  their 
turn  to  use  the  farm  machinery  which  was  being 
supplied  to  the  department  by  the  American  Relief. 


374  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

If  competitive  sport  and  the  habit  of  co-operation 
outlast  the  emergency  of  the  peace,  and  persist  when 
normal  conditions  are  wholly  resumed,  something  so 
new  will  have  taken  root  in  France,  that  a  marked 
and  salutary  modification  may  be  looked  for  in  the 
national  character.  Quite  as  odd  and  novel  as  the 
sight  of  the  books  on  sport  for  sale  in  the  shops  was 
the  spectacle  of  little  boys  of  eight  and  ten  years  old, 
kicking  footballs  in  the  various  French  towns  where 
I  stayed;  more  interesting  still  was  a  game  played 
near  Paris  between  an  all  England  and  an  all  French 
team,  in  which  the  French  outplayed  their  adversa- 
ries during  the  second  half,  and  at  which  fifty  thou- 
sand spectators  looked  on.  It  was  a  sight  as  new 
as  aeroplanes  were  once;  it  may  in  time  become  as 
familiar.  If  the  war  so  far  has  done  anything  but 
harm  to  the  world,  it  is  in  the  awakening  of  the 
French  to  the  value  and  the  practice  of  outdoor 
competitive  sport. 

Another  new  sight  in  France  was  a  large  official 
placard  in  the  railway  stations  and  in  other  public 
places,  exhorting  young  husbands  to  beget  many 
children,  and  specifying  the  graded  sums  that  would 
be  paid  by  way  of  support  and  reward  to  parents 
with  families  of  three,  four,  five,  and  more.  Not 
infrequently  I  saw  couples  who  were  evidently  quite 
fresh  from  the  marriage  service  reading  these  no- 
tices.    Once  at  Meaux,  I  spoke  to  such  a  pair. 

"In  Germany,"  I  said  to  them,  "I  understand  that 
this  sort  of  encouragement  is  not  needed." 

:It  appears  so,  monsieur,"  said  the  bridegroom. 
'Well,  young  man,"  I  returned,  "I  am  sure  you 
know  the  words  of  the  Marseillaise:  'Allons,  enfants 
de  la  patrie.'  " 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  375 


a, 


C'est  juste,  monsieur!"  cried  the  bridegroom 
with  a  gleaming  laugh.  The  bride  had  walked  a 
few  steps  away  so  that  she  might  seem  to  be  out  of 
hearing. 

But  to  Nicolas,  who  brought  my  hot  water  morn- 
ing and  evening  in  Paris,  and  to  Paul,  who  took  me 
so  often  and  through  so  many  miles  of  the  devas- 
tated regions  in  his  car,  I  said  more.  Nicolas  had 
been  telling  me  how  he  came  to  be  taken  prisoner  in 
the  early  days  of  the  war. 
"I  was  of  the  8th  corps,  monsieur." 
"That  was  away  off  in  the  East,  wasn't  it?" 
"Yes,  monsieur,  in  the  Vosges.  We  were  led  by 
persons  who  made  some  blunder  every  day.  We 
were  marched  round  and  round  without  any  point. 
Once  we  rambled  about  in  various  directions  for 
fifteen  days.  We  had  been  at  Gerard  Mer  and  at 
other  places  in  the  Vosges,  and  finally  one  morning 
in  a  fog  we  were  on  a  plain  near  Ste.  Die,  and  the 
battle  of  Luneville  began.  We  were  left  without  any 
guide,  with  the  Germans  on  eminences  all  round  us, 
and  our  whole  battalion  was  captured.  Others,  who 
were  better  led  and  were  not  helpless,  escaped." 
"What  did  they  do  with  you  in  Germany?" 
"They  put  us  to  work.  I  was  at  Ingoldstadt,  and 
also  at  Bayreuth.  I  did  work  in  the  railroads,  and 
of  course  we  never  got  any  news  that  we  believed, 
but  we  learned  how  it  was  going  by  the  difference  in 
the  manner  of  the  Boches.  In  1915  the  German 
soldiers  who  passed  us  on  their  way  to  the  front 
used  to  shake  their  fists  at  us.  They  would  have 
massacred  us  if  they  had  been  permitted  to  do  so, 
but  we  were  too  useful.  Thus  we  knew  things  were 
going  well  with  them.    Then  there  were  times  in  '16 


376  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

and  '17  when  those  going  to  the  front  did  not  shake 
their  fists  at  us.  Their  heads  hung  down.  By  that 
we  could  tell  that  things  were  not  going  so  well  for 
them. ' ' 

"Were  there  no  German  workmen  with  you?" 

"But  yes,  monsieur,  naturally.  Ah,  those  work- 
men in  Germany,  they  are  slaves!  See!  whenever 
the  ingenieur  was  coming  near  us — every  time  and 
each  time  he  came,  no  matter  how  often — they  bowed 
low  to  him,  just  as  low  as  the  first  time.  In  France, 
after  you  have  once  touched  your  hat  and  said  good- 
morning,  you  don't  keep  on  doing  it.  C'est  une 
platitude.  But  they  would  say  to  us,  'Hush!  The 
foreman  is  coming' ;  and  they'd  start  bowing.  As  if 
we  cared  for  the  foreman !  They  work  through  fear. 
Ah,  they  are  slaves.  Voila.  And  that  is  why  they 
are  doing  so  well  now  in  their  business,  because  those 
workmen  work  through  fear.  And  after  the  Armis- 
tice they  saw  their  soldiers  come  back  heads  high, 
with  their  arms  and  banners,  wearing  flowers.  So 
they  strewed  the  streets  with  flowers  and  hailed  their 
heroic  army  and  believed  that  the  war  had  finished 
en  queue  de  poisson.  They  will  come  again,  mon- 
sieur, one  knows  that.    And  they  outnumber  us." 

"Whose  fault  is  that,  Nicolas?" 

"It  is  not  our  fault  that  they  are  barbarians  and 
have  a  child  every  year. ' ' 

"Well,  Nicolas!  Then  you  will  call  me  a  barba- 
rian because  I  have  six  children !  Listen !  You  have 
heard  of  Mr.  Roosevelt?" 

"Oh,  yes,  monsieur.  Every  one  has  heard  of 
him.  He  was  here  and  made  a  fine  speech  at  the 
Sorbonne." 

"Mr.  Roosevelt  told  us  Americans  that  we  were 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  377 

committing  race  suicide.  He  said  that  the  richer  we 
became  the  fewer  children  we  had,  while  the  foreign- 
ers in  our  slums  were  having  many,  and  that  it  would 
be  merely  a  question  of  time  when  the  old  American 
stock  would  die  out  and  our  Bepublic  fall  to  pieces 
in  the  hands  of  races  that  did  not  have  the  tradition 
or  the  power  of  self-government  in  their  blood.  Now 
I  think  at  this  rate  you  French  will  commit  race 
suicide.  You  wish  us  to  come  back  and  help  you  fight 
the  Germans  if  they  invade  you  again.  But  if  I  say 
to  American  mothers  that  we  ought  to  do  this,  that  we 
ought  to  save  France,  they  will  reply,  why  should 
we  bear  sons  to  be  killed  in  France?  Let  French 
mothers  bear  more  sons !  After  all,  Nicolas,  in  Brit- 
tany your  peasants  do  have  large  families." 

"They  are  Catholics,  monsieur.' ' 

"Well,  on  too  many  of  the  crosses  in  your  ceme- 
teries, I  read  the  names  of  men  who  are  described 
as  the  only  son  of  the  family." 

"It  is  because  the  parents  wish  to  have  the  little 
share  of  land  which  they  have  owned  for  generations 
descend  as  a  whole  to  that  son.  They  love  it  and  they 
wish  to  keep  it  whole,  and  not  have  to  divide  it  among 
several  as  they  are  compelled  to  do  by  the  Code 
Napoleon." 

"I  don't  think  our  American  mothers  will  be  im- 
pressed by  that  argument,  Nicolas." 

He  now  became  philosophic.  "Yes,  monsieur,  it 
is  true.  The  Frenchman  is  an  egoist.  He  does  not 
wish  to  be  burdened  with  the  support  of  a  family  so 
large  that  he  has  no  time  to  enjoy  himself.  In  Ger- 
many life  is  easier,  and  their  ways  do  not  induce  them 
to  limit  their  families.  And  when  a  family  grows  to 
eight — or  perhaps  it  is  ten — children,  the  Kaiser  has 


378  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

always  stood  godfather  to  that  last  child.  So  you 
see,  with  their  feeling  about  the  Kaiser,  they  have 
had  a  strong  incentive.  We,  with  our  love  of  our 
land,  have  that  reason  for  making  only  one  son  to 
inherit  all  of  it. ' ' 

"Now  that  the  Kaiser  is  gone,  Nicolas,  perhaps 
those  families  of  ten  will  stop. ' ' 

"That  is  not  very  probable,  monsieur.  You  see, 
when  one  has  got  the  habit — "  and  Nicolas  shrugged, 
'  *  Ah,  oui, ' '  he  concluded.  His  generalizations  almost 
always  ended  with  ' '  ah,  oui. ' ' 

Paul,  my  chauffeur,  also  had  his  philosophy,  like 
most  Frenchmen  of  every  class,  and,  like  most 
Frenchmen,  he  had  the  art  of  expressing  it.  We  had 
come  into  Amiens  one  afternoon,  and  I  got  out  on  the 
steps  at  the  west  front  of  the  cathedral. 

"Paul,"  said  I,  "I  wonder  if  I  could  guess  your 
age?" 

"If  monsieur  will  try,"  he  smiled. 

"I  think  that  you  must  be  about  thirty-two." 

"That  is  my  age,  monsieur,"  he  said,  with  a  tone 
of  surprise. 

"So  you  were  expecting  me  to  get  it  wrong?" 

"I  thought  you  would  say  that  I  was  older."  He 
stopped,  and  into  his  face  came  that  look  which  I  had 
begun  to  know  in  April  1919 — the  look  of  having  been 
changed  by  sights  and  by  knowledge  that  would  never 
be  forgotten,  and  that  were  always  present.  Then 
he  said  quietly  and  simply : 

' '  The  war  has  made  old  people  out  of  many  young 
people." 

"Yes,  Paul.  And  I  suppose  the  only  way  to  look 
at  that,  is  to  think  that  any  man  like  you,  who  were 
in  your  twenties  when  that  whirlwind  caught  you  up 


IDLE?    WELL    OFF?  379 

from  ordinary  life,  would  be  no  true  man  at  all  if  he 
were  not  many  years  older  in  the  spirit  when  the 
whirlwind  set  him  down." 

"Yes,  monsieur." 

"Are  you  married?" 

"No,  monsieur.     Oh,  no.     Not  that." 

' '  Well,  but  you  're  thirty- two.    It  is  quite  time. ' ' 

"Perhaps.  I  have  never  turned  my  mind  in  that 
direction.     It  may  be  that  I  shall  come  to  it. ' ' 

' '  Don 't  wait  too  long ! ' ' 

"He,  monsieur,  le  mariage  est  si  bizarre!"  And 
Paul,  like  Nicolas,  punctuated  his  generalization  with 
a  shrug. 

The  remarkable  and  unanswerable  adjective  which 
he  applied  to  marriage  stuck  in  my  mind,  and  on  a 
subsequent  day,  I  said  to  him: 

"Paul,  if  the  idea  of  a  wife  does  not  appeal  to  you, 
here  is  something  that  will.  I  see  the  old  people 
that  the  war  has  made  out  of  young  people.  I  see 
them  everywhere,  and  it  is  very  sad.  But  I  am  sure 
that  the  years  of  rebuilding  which  lie  before  you  all 
will  not  be  as  dreary  as  they  look.  Don 't  think  about 
them  as  a  whole,  don't  imagine  their  united  weight 
as  pressing  down  upon  every  day.  It  will  be  dis- 
persed, only  a  little  of  it  will  be  in  each  day,  and  it 
will  always  be  growing  less." 

1 '  That  is  true, ' '  said  Paul. 

"And  to  see  France  reviving,  to  be  part  of  it,  to 
cause  some  of  it  yourself,  will  carry  you  through  each 
day,  and  you  will  find,  beside  plenty  of  hard  work, 
plenty  of  laughter  awaiting  you.  Perhaps  even 
plenty  of  children ! ' ' 

"Children  will  not  be  a  laughing  matter!"  said 
Paul. 


380  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

It  was  easy  to  talk  to  him,  and  to  any  one  before 
whom  a  possible  future  stretched,  a  span  of  years 
wherein  to  rebuild  and  refill  an  emptied  life; — but 
there  were  others.  There  was  a  custodian  in  the 
museum  at  Dijon.  He  grew  to  know  me  as  we  walked 
among  the  pictures  and  while  he  told  me  about  the 
dukes  of  Burgundy,  whose  tombs  are  there;  and  one 
day  he  talked  about  himself.  He  was  sixty-seven,  he 
had  seen  the  Germans  come  in  1870,  he  had  seen 
France  recover  from  the  war  only  to  be  thrown 
prostrate  again  in  his  old  age. 

"There  are  people,"  he  said,  "who  can  make  new 
friends  when  they  have  lost  old  ones.  But  if  one 
loses  one's  only  son,  one  has  nothing  left.  Life  is  a 
burden.  One  is  not  sure  that  one  wishes  it  any 
more.,, 

What  could  I  say  to  him? 

Again  there  were  others,  many  others  all  over 
France,  who  had  gone  a  step  beyond  him,  and  had 
become  sure  that  they  did  not  wish  life  any  more: 
Clerks,  small  officials,  employees  faithful  and  of  many 
years'  service,  whose  fixed  salary  was  no  longer 
enough.  It  had  sufficed  them,  they  had  felt  safe,  they 
had  built  their  lives  upon  it,  a  roof,  a  family,  books, 
perhaps  a  garden.  Suddenly  the  bills  for  food,  for 
all  necessities,  trebled,  and  they  found  themselves 
past  their  middle  years — and  unable  to  pay.  The 
salary  grew  no  larger,  they  faced  implacable  debt  and 
want  at  fifty.  They  had  no  spring  with  which  to 
start  afresh.  They  drew  down  their  window  shades 
— and  freed  themselves  from  the  burden  of  life. 
Perhaps  some  might  have  persisted  but  for  the  four 
years '  draft  upon  their  fortitude.    To  meet  the  war 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  381 

they  had  drawn  upon  their  courage  every  day ;  there 
was  no  balance  left  for  further  stress. 

It  is  hard  for  us,  whose  lives  and  property  no  in- 
vading enemy  has  ever  disturbed,  to  think  of  what 
living  near  that  war  was  like.  Abbeville  was  a  large 
place  near  enough  to  it  to  be  bombarded  every  night 
at  times.  The  shells  came  in  the  dark  hours.  The 
citizens  attended  to  their  daily  affairs  in  town,  but 
they  dared  not  sleep  there.  Every  evening  a  special 
train  took  them  away,  out  into  the  country,  and  there 
in  the  fields,  or  in  any  shelter  that  they  could  find, 
they  slept;  and  each  morning  the  train  took  them 
back  to  their  business.  The  aunt  and  uncle  of  a 
young  lady  who  told  me  this  came  into  Abbeville  by 
the  train  one  day,  and  found  the  house  that  they  had 
locked  up  the  night  before  was  no  longer  to  be  seen ; 
it  had  been  dashed  to  atoms. 

What  inhabitants  of  Philadelphia  or  St.  Louis,  or 
anywhere  here,  can  imagine  what  it  was  to  live 
through  weeks  and  years  of  such  experience?  Had 
they  done  so,  they  would  hardly  be  asking  if  France 
intends  to  "insist"  upon  the  whole  of  her  " in- 
demnity "  from  Germany — that  "indemnity"  which 
has  already  been  cut  down  by  about  one-third  of  the 
sum  set  by  the  Treaty  of  Versailles.  And  those 
Americans  who  talk  about  the  line  between  us  and 
Canada,  unguarded  for  a  century,  and  ask  why 
France  wishes  an  army,  would  they  like  to  change 
places  with  France,  and  have  an  unguarded  line 
between  them  and  a  race  that  has  invaded  them  every 
50  years  for  15  centuries  ? 

At  Massevaux  in  Alsace,  I  found  the  cure's  door, 
and  wrote  "de  la  part  de  M.  Clemenceau"  on  my 
card,  and  sent  it  in.     The  cure  came,  and  I  said : 


382  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

'  *  Clemenceau  sent  me  here.  He  told  me  to  come 
and  see  two  of  his  friends  in  Massevaux  and  Thann, 
and  say  that  he  had  bidden  me  to  do  so,  and  they 
would  talk  freely." 

''Come  in,"  said  the  cure.  And  he  took  me  first 
upstairs  to  his  room.  There  the  windows  looked  out 
upon  his  church. 

After  explaining  what  had  brought  me  to  France,  I 
continued : 

"Is  that  the  church  where  you  took  Clemenceau 
and  the  generals  that  day  of  1918,  when  Massevaux 
had  ceased  to  be  Germany  and  was  France  again  after 
46  years?" 

"But  certainly,"  said  the  cure. 

"You  went  with  him  and  the  generals  and  their 
soldiers  in  there,  and  after  standing  silent  for  a  while, 
you  all  sang  the  Marseillaise  together?" 

"But  certainly." 

"What  deep  and  great  happiness,  mon  pere,  to  be 
able  to  sing  that  song  aloud  again  and  not  to  have  to 
say  French  prayers  in  silence  any  more ! ' ' 

Then  we  spoke  of  Alsace,  France,  and  the  future. 

' '  Have  you  talked  with  many  Alsatians  ? "  he  asked. 

"I  wish  that  I  could.  I  am  afraid  to  begin  politics 
with  them — and  I  think  they  are  with  me.  Who  can 
be  sure  who  any  stranger  is  ?  Germany  haunts  their 
minds,  I  feel  that,  and  it  haunts  their  manners  also. 
What  do  you  think  of  this?  When  I  changed  trains 
at  Cernay  to  come  here,  there  was  a  woman  getting 
into  the  car.  I  drew  back  and  motioned  her  to  go 
first — and  she  said,  'After  you,  monsieur, '  and  waited 
till  I  had  preceded  her.  That  is  a  little  thing,  mon 
pere,  but  does  it  not  reveal  much?" 

He  nodded.     "If  they  became  willing  to  tell  you 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  383 

what  they  have  in  their  hearts,  you  would  find  that 
they  all  expect  the  Germans  to  come  back  in  ten 
years." 

"In  October  1914,"  I  said,  "when  Mr.  Wilson  was 
writing  those  notes  to  Max  of  Baden,  I  published  a 
little  piece  in  our  papers  in  which  I  said  that  if  we 
trusted  Berlin  when  it  cried  'Kamerad,'  our  children 
would  pay  for  it  with  their  blood. ' ' 

"People  in  Mulhouse  spoke  to  me  of  such  a  piece," 
said  the  cure.  ' '  They  said  it  was  by  an  American. — 
Alsatians  believe  that  Germany  will  never  pay  the 
reparations,  but  that  they  would  have  forced  France 
to  pay  most  of  it  by  now,  had  the  situation  been 
reversed." 

"You  are  not  the  first  person  who  has  said  that 
to  me,"  I  responded.  "The  present  situation  seems 
to  me  to  be  chiefly  the  fault  of  Mr.  Wilson  and  Mr. 
Lloyd  George.  We  are  more  fortunate  than  Eng- 
land. England  still  has  Mr.  Lloyd  George.  I  was 
indiscreet  enough  to  say  to  M.  Clemenceau  that  it 
seemed  to  me  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  if  he  continued  on 
the  way  he  is  going,  would  end  by  achieving  what 
Napoleon  Bonaparte  failed  to  achieve — the  destruc- 
tion of  the  British  Empire." 

The  cure  looked  at  me.  "And  what  did  M.  Cle- 
menceau say  to  that  ? ' ' 

"Naturally  he  was  discreet.  But  he  talked  much 
of  India. ' ' 

"Have  you  ever  heard  any  one  say  that  Mr.  Wilson 
sent  a  message  through  Lloyd  George  that  if  the 
Allies  did  not  accept  an  armistice,  he  would  withdraw 
the  American  troops?" 

"I  have  heard  that  several  times,  but  never  at  first- 
hand.    I  hope  it  is  not  true. ' ' 


384  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

"Listen,"  said  the  cure,  "in  September  1918,  Foch 
was  here,  in  Massevaux,  and  so  was  General  Castel- 
nau.  I  said  to  Foch,  'how  is  it  going  ? "  I  hold  them, ' 
he  answered,  'they  are  done.'  'Then  why  go  on?'  I 
asked  him.  'Because  we  must  enter  Germany  and 
finish  there.  Otherwise  they  will  say  that  we  did  not 
win,  and  there  will  be  no  finish. '  So  said  Castelnau 
also.  And  then,  why  did  they  not  finish  in  Germany  ? 
The  greatest  victory  in  history  was  turned  into  an 
abortion." 

"It  is  very  grievous  for  me  to  think,"  said  I,  "that 
we  are  responsible  for  that." 

"Oh,  we  all  understand  now  that  it  was  not  you. 
Mr.  Wilson  was  without  your  mandate." 

"We  could  not  tell  you  so,"  said  I. 

"Nor  could  we  French  tell  him  so.  By  his  own 
arbitrary  act  he  placed  us  all  in  this  false  position." 

"Then  you  think  that  Foch " 

"Foch — what  was  he  to  do  but  to  be  loyal?  He 
sank  his  own  judgment,  he  stood  by  what  was  forced 
upon  him,  and  said  to  the  world  that  an  armistice 
gave  us  all  that  we  wanted  without  the  sacrifice  of 
more  lives.  But  do  you  think  that  he,  who  told  me 
in  September  that  it  must  finish  in  Germany  or 
remain  unfinished,  had  changed  his  mind  ?  Have  you 
ever  heard  that  one  afternoon  when  Clemenceau  and 
Wilson  and  Lloyd  George  were  sitting  in  council  to- 
gether, Foch  came  in  to  speak  to  Clemenceau,  and 
Wilson  said,  'Who  is  that  military  man?  I  will  not 
have  military  men  in  here.'  And  Clemenceau,  to 
save  the  situation  quickly,  rose  and  said,  'It  is  five 
o  'clock.    Let  us  go  to  tea. '    Have  you  heard  that ! ' ' 

1 '  Never.     Couldn  't  that  have  been  invented  ? ' ' 

' '  Oh,  yes,  it  could  have  been  invented ;  but  no  inven- 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  385 

tion  sticks  which  is  not  characteristic.  We  know  that 
Mr.  Wilson  had  no  power  to  promise  us  your  help  in 
case  of  another  invasion.  But  the  next  war,  should 
it  come,  would  be  over  before  you  could  reach  us. 
People  will  never  march  to  any  war  again,  they  will 
fly  through  the  air. ' ' 

We  must  have  been  talking  for  an  hour,  when  I 
rose. 

''Let  me  show  you  our  church,  where  we  sang  the 
Marseillaise, ' '  said  the  cure. 

He  accompanied  me  out  and  across  the  street  into 
the  church.     There  he  pointed  up  to  a  broken  window. 

"A  bomb  did  that,"  he  said.  "It  also  killed  the 
only  man  who  had  moved  into  Massevaux  for  safety. 
He  was  an  old  man.  Here  is  where  we  stood  and 
sang  the  Marseillaise." 

I  stood  there  with  him  for  a  while ;  and  after  he 
had  shown  me  the  rest  of  the  church,  and  the  very 
fine  organ,  I  took  my  leave.  His  farewell  words 
were: 

"I  have  known  the  Germans  for  forty-five  years. 
They  are  a  curious  race;  like  no  other.  And  they 
have  won  the  peace.: 


>5 


On  such  another  afternoon  as  this  I  made  my  way 
to  Thann.  The  light  of  May  was  shining  upon  the 
Vosges,  hill  and  valley  were  filled  with  it,  the  fruit 
blossoms  glowed  in  it.  Thann  was  neighbor  to  Mas- 
sevaux, separated  by  one  of  the  wooded  ridges  of  the 
Vosges ;  and  along  the  valley  where  it  lay,  the  mills 
of  a  large  and  long-founded  industry  extended.  The 
house  of  the  present  master  of  this  industry  stood  on 
a  hill  overlooking  his  manufactories  and  the  village 
where  his  operatives  lived.     Once  again  the  name  of 


386  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Clemenceau  opened  doors  to  me,  and  the  master  took 
me  into  his  study;  once  again  the  understanding  of 
America  was  clear  and  cordial.  The  responsibility 
of  the  evil  Armistice  and  of  all  that  followed  was 
fixed  where  it  belonged,  not  upon  us  or  our  Senate ; 
and  the  good  that  we  had  done  was  also  fixed  where 
it  belonged,  not  upon  the  man  who  had  "kept  us  out 
of  the  war,"  but  upon  the  heart  and  mind  of  the 
nation  that  had  ended  by  seeing  the  true  meaning  of 
the  war  in  spite  of  him.  This  French  gentleman  had 
seen  many  of  our  officers,  and  these  had  told  him  the 
truth  about  our  country. 

In  one  of  the  front  windows  of  the  room  where  we 
talked,  a  bullet  had  drilled  a  splintered  hole  through 
the  pane ;  another  had  dug  a  cavity  in  the  wall  while 
the  daughter  of  the  house  had  sat  at  the  desk  where 
her  father  was  sitting  now.  These  were  the  only 
injuries  the  house  had  suffered.  Both  the  master's 
sons  had  been  killed.  After  speaking  of  the  North 
and  the  South  he  asked  me  about  our  Middle  West. 

"They  were  slower,"  he  said,  "to  realize  the  war, 
were  they  not  1 ' ' 

' '  For  this  reason, ' '  I  answered.  ' '  They  were  mis- 
led by  our  President  who  told  us  in  1916  that  we  were 
not  concerned  with  the  causes  or  the  objects  of  the 
European  conflict — and  they  are  a  community  deeply 
absorbed  in  its  own  development.  They  are  not  in- 
clined to  look  out  of  the  window.  But  when  they 
finally  did  look  out  and  saw  what  was  happening,  the 
manner  in  which  they  rose  and  set  to  work  was  truly 
magnificent.  They  can  do  anything,  once  they  are 
aroused." 

"Is  your  industrial  crisis  over?"  he  asked;  and  for 
a  while  we  discussed  that  and  our  labor  difficulties. 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  387 

I  discovered  that  he  was  a  man  who  certainly 
looked  out  of  his  window  and  saw  long  distances.  In 
speaking  about  some  of  the  French  methods  of  busi- 
ness, he  said:  "We  are  Chinese."  Presently  he 
turned  the  talk  to  Alsace  and  its  special  problems.  I 
had  spoken  about  the  double  personality  which  I  felt 
in  the  people  of  Strasbourg. 

"I  am  travelling  second  and  third  class  in  the 
trains  here,"  I  said,  "because  it  is  in  those  cars 
rather  than  in  the  first  class  that  I  seem  to  see  the 
Alsatian  more  distinctly.  I  notice  that  the  people 
glide  from  French  into  the  local  dialect  here,  and 
back  again  into  French,  almost  in  the  same  sentence. 
And  I  notice  also  that  their  appearance  is  rather 
German  than  French." 

"That  is  quite  true.  Their  bodies  have  the  heavy 
character  of  the  German  physique — but  not  their 
minds.  Have  you  observed  their  manner  of  speak- 
ing?" 

"I  am  not  quite  sure  what  you  mean." 

"There  is  a  lightness,  a  turn  of  drollery  and  of 
wit  in  what  they  say  which  is  not  at  all  like  the  heavi- 
ness of  their  flesh.  Their  spirit  is  French.  They  have 
not  dared  to  be  French  outwardly  since  1871.  In 
November  1918,  some  soldiers  of  our  army  who  had 
entered  and  were  marching  by  a  field  where  stood  an 
old  peasant  woman,  saw  her  suddenly  burst  into 
tears ;  and  she  cried  out  to  them  that  it  was  nothing 
but  happiness  at  being  able  to  speak  French  aloud 
again." 

1 '  Have  you  any  idea  how  much  German  sympathy 
is  lurking  among  the  people?"  I  asked. 

"Broadly  speaking,  I  think  it  is  among  the  lower 
classes  that  the  German  spirit  hangs  on,  but  it  is  by 


388  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

no  means  universal  there.  In  spite  of  all  that  they 
conld  do  during  46  years,  they  did  not  manage  to 
make  us  love  them.  It  was  a  rule  of  fear.  You  have 
heard  of  the  Saverne  incident  ?" 

" Where  the  Prussian  officer  cut  the  face  of  a 
lame  cobbler  with  his  sword  because  he  was  not 
wearing  a  sufficiently  German  expression?  Oh, 
yes.  And  the  Crown  Prince  sent  him  a  message  of 
congratulation. ' ' 

"But  do  you  know  about  poularde?" 

"Poularde?  No." 

"In  the  cafe  at  Saverne  which  the  Prussian  officers 
frequented,  there  was  a  bill-of-fare  on  the  table  one 
day,  upon  which,  among  the  German  words,  was  the 
French  one,  poularde.  A  young  Prussian  lieutenant 
was  so  enraged  by  the  appearance  of  this  that  he  drew 
his  sword  and  cut  the  bill-of-fare  in  two  where  the 
word  occurred.  His  name  was  von  Forstner.  It  was 
in  the  Restaurant  a  la  Carpe  d'or,  opposite  the  Place 
du  Chateau,  where  this  happened.  If  you  have  time, 
pay  Saverne  and  that  restaurant  a  visit.  The  lady 
who  saw  the  whole  poularde  affair  still  keeps  it." 

"That  whole  brutal  outrage  of  Saverne,"  said  I, 
"was  a  sort  of  rehearsal  of  what  they  did  next  year 
in  the  war — a  specimen  of  what  they  would  have  done 
to  the  world,  had  they  won. ' ' 

"Yes,  they  did  their  best  to  Prussianize  us  and 
divide  us  against  each  other,  by  encouraging  disunity 
in  both  religion  and  education.  They  had  separate 
schools  for  Catholics,  Protestants,  and  Jews — but 
always  with  the  Kaiser  as  the  centre  of  worship.  I 
have  heard  a  pastor  say  in  a  pulpit  'you  must  not 
consider  the  Kaiser  as  God's  deputy,  but  as  Jesus 
Christ  himself.'  "    He  added  that  it  was  German 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  389 

policy  with  the  young  to  educate  "le  conscience  contre 
l'interet." 

"How  long  do  you  think  it  will  take,"  I  asked,  "for 
Alsace  to  become  completely  French?" 

"A  generation  should  accomplish  it.  All  the  chil- 
dren are  eager  to  learn  French,  and  certain  troubles 
which  we  are  having  now  will  be  adjusted.  There  is 
a  difficulty  about  the  church.  The  clericals  naturally 
resist  a  change  to  the  present  system  in  France  which 
would  deprive  them  of  the  direct  control  of  their  office 
and  estate.  This  would  never  have  come  about  in 
France  if  M.  Combe  and  the  Pope  had  either  of  them 
been  capable  of  compromise." 

As  he  talked  on  about  Alsace,  and  France,  and 
America,  I  listened  and  replied,  feeling  all  the  while 
a  sympathy  for  him  that  I  dared  not  express.  His 
mills  in  the  valley  of  Thann  had  been  going  for  a 
hundred  years,  owned  and  conducted  by  his  family 
from  the  beginning.  He  told  me  that  he  had  never 
had  any  trouble  with  his  operatives. 

"I  have  a  system  of  pensions,  and  I  have  always 
remembered  that  these  men  are  human.  There  came 
a  time  when  they  demanded  syndicalization.  I  made 
no  ob j  ection  to  this.  '  You  have  the  right  to  it, '  I  said 
to  them.  'But  I  have  a  right  also.  I  will  deal  with 
you  directly,  and  not  with  any  outsider;  and  I  will 
treat  non-syndicalized  men  exactly  on  the  same  foot- 
ing, neither  better  nor  worse.'  I  thought  that  I 
knew  what  would  happen,  but  I  did  not  expect  it 
so  soon.  In  six  months  all  of  my  workmen  had  left 
the  syndicate." 

I  wanted  to  stay  on  and  listen  to  this  French  gentle- 
man. His  father  had  been  president  of  the  Senate 
during  the  Dreyfus  case,  and  was  one  of  the  first  to 


390  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

believe  that  Dreyfus  was  innocent — a  stand  which 
cost  him  many  friends,  and  his  office.  He  in  his  turn 
was  now  a  senator. 

"And  so  M.  Clemenceau  sent  yon  to  me,"  he  said. 
"I  have  known  him  since  I  was  knee-high.  What  a 
man ! ' ' 

"He  made  me  think,"  I  answered,  "of  Mr.  Roose- 
velt when  he  was  our  President.  "Whenever  I  paid 
him  a  visit,  I  always  felt  as  if  I  had  been  talking  to 
Vesuvius  in  active  eruption." 

Yes,  I  wanted  to  stay ;  but  I  had  been  here  an  hour, 
and  so  I  rose. 

"But  at  least  you  will  let  me  get  you  some  refresh- 
ment ? "  he  said ;  and  when  I  declined, ' '  then  I  will  go 
with  you  to  the  station." 

It  was  about  half  a  mile ;  and  as  we  walked  down 
towards  the  valley,  very  beautiful  church  bells 
sounded  from  below,  their  tone  floating  up  through 
the  quiet  air  among  the  woods  and  ridges.  It  was 
May  1st,  and  as  we  drew  nearer  the  village,  we  heard 
a  strain  of  thin  false  brass  music.  Presently  we 
turned  a  corner,  and  a  very  small  company  of  "reds" 
marched  by,  blowing  trumpets  to  the  glory  of  dis- 
order. A  few  ragged  children  followed  them.  The 
master  pointed  to  them,  smiling. 

1 '  Not  a  large  proportion  for  a  great  industrial  com- 
munity," he  said. 

Once  more  I  looked  at  him,  a  senator,  a  captain 
of  industry,  the  establisher  of  pensions,  friend  to 
his  men,  and  owner  of  a  mass  of  buildings  which 
stretched  far  down  the  valley ;  and  with  both  his  sons 
killed  in  the  war.    I  could  not  help  speaking : 

"Is  there  none  of  your  blood  to  follow  and  take 
this  from  your  hands?" 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  391 

"Not  any  longer,"  he  replied  quietly,  "I  am  the 
last." 


I  went  to  Saverne  and  the  lady  of  the  Golden  Carp 
enacted  the  whole  scene  of  the  poularde  for  me  as  I 
sat  drinking  coffee  at  the  table  in  the  back  of  the 
room  where  it  had  happened.  But  the  youth,  or  the 
beauty,  or  some  attribute  of  Lieutenant  von  Forstner, 
had  softened  her  heart  toward  him. 

"He  was  only  19,"  she  said.  "It  was  the  fault  of 
his  colonel."  And  she  told  me,  among  other  things, 
that  all  the  children  of  Saverne  were  eager  to  learn 
French,  and  that  the  girls  were  quicker  at  it  than  the 
boys.  Were  I  Alsatian,  I,  too,  should  wish  to  learn 
French ; — here  is  some  Alsatian : 

"De  reizigers  gelieven  niet  op  het  privaat  te  gaan 
zoolang  de  trein  in  eene  statie  stilstaat." 


As  I  talked  with  General  Humbert  in  Strasbourg, 
a  budget  of  papers  lay  upon  his  desk. 

' '  This, ' '  he  said,  laying  his  hand  upon  the  heap, ' '  is 
my  latest  secret  information  from  Germany.  They 
are  not  disarming.  They  are  merely  changing  the 
name  of  the  Polizei  which  they  agreed  at  Spa  to 
disband  into  a  Polizei  with  a  new  name."  Then  he 
gave  me  the  details.  "And  they  are  practising  gun- 
nery twice  instead  of  once  a  week. ' '  And  he  thumped 
the  papers  lightly. 

"I  am  being  indiscreet  every  day,"  I  said,  "and 
now  I  will  add  one  more  to  my  indiscretions.  Some 
of  your  recent  allies  are  calling  you  impatient. 
What  strikes  me  is  the  extraordinary  patience  of 
France  under  repeated  provocations." 


392  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

As  I  was  going,  he  suddenly  spoke  of  America,  of 
onr  army,  of  our  soldiers  and  officers,  with  such  a 
warmth  and  enthusiasm  that  I  will  not  repeat  it ;  and 
all  I  could  reply  was : 

"My  lack  of  French  prevents  my  expressing  to 
you,  as  I  should  like  to  do,  how  deeply  your  words 
touch  me." 

Anywhere  that  you  went,  anyone  that  you  saw,  it 
was  the  same ;  if  you  were  silent  on  the  subject  of  our 
contribution  to  the  war,  they  would  introduce  it 
sooner  or  later,  and  always  with  generous  and  cordial 
words ;  but  American  boasting  had  not  pleased  them 
any  better  than  it  pleased  those  Americans  who  did 
not  boast. 

From  Guy  Ropartz,  the  distinguished  French  com- 
poser, and  director  of  the  conservatory  of  music  at 
Strasbourg,  I  heard  most  interesting  facts  about 
music  there  under  the  German  rule.  His  Hun  pre- 
decessor had  done  his  best  to  extinguish  French  music 
in  the  town — none  had  ever  been  taught,  and  none  had 
ever  been  played  at  the  concerts.  Ropartz  found  the 
young  people  of  Strasbourg  entirely  unaware  that 
any  French  music  existed ;  they  had  never  heard  of 
Saint-Saens,  or  Cesar  Franck,  or  Debussy,  or  Berlioz, 
or  apparently  of  anybody  except  Germans.  But  he 
found  something  even  more  interesting  than  this. 
The  Hun  predecessor — whose  name  was  Kitzner,  I 
think — had  introduced  many  improvements  into  the 
symphonies  of  Beethoven;  he  had  not  only  made  cuts 
in  them,  he  had  put  in  his  own  orchestration  and  made 
changes  in  the  notation.  Ropartz  was  obliged  to 
spend  much  time  in  restoring  Beethoven's  own  in- 
strumentation in  the  scores  of  the  symphonies. 

"I  always  admired  greatly  the  calm  conducting  of 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  393 

Hans  Kichter , ' '  he  told  me.  ' ' It  was  not  only  deeply 
understanding,  but  it  was  also  always  reverent.  His 
aim  was  never  anything  but  to  learn  the  composer's 
intention  and  then  to  carry  it  out.  But  after  the  time 
of  Nikisch  and  Weingartner,  it  became  the  fashion  of 
German  conductors  to  use  the  symphonies  of  the 
masters  merely  as  vehicles  for  themselves.,, 

"I  have  heard  Nikisch  do  that  to  Mozart  in  Bos- 
ton, ' '  I  told  him. 

During  the  war  Kopartz  had  three  sons  at  the 
front.  He  was  then  teaching  at  the  conservatory  of 
Nancy,  and  as  that  town  was  not  safe,  he  sent  his 
wife  and  daughter  away  to  Brittany,  and  meanwhile 
kept  the  students  at  Nancy  busy  over  the  musical 
exercises. 

"When  the  whistle  blew  to  announce  an  air  raid," 
he  said,  "we  used  to  go  down  into  a  cellar  and  con- 
tinue our  exercises  there  until  the  bombs  stopped 
falling  and  the  safety  signal  blew.  Then  we  would 
come  back  above  ground  again  and  go  on  with  the 
work.  The  young  people  were  perfectly  calm.  One 
day  I  was  getting  ready  to  go  to  Brittany  for  a  short 
visit  to  my  wife  and  daughter.  I  was  writing  and 
signing  some  papers  at  my  desk  before  leaving,  when 
the  thought  came  to  me,  what  a  needless  thing  it 
would  be  to  be  bombed  at  such  a  time !  So  I  took  my 
papers  to  the  cellar.  While  I  was  down  there  I  heard 
a  noise  of  an  unusual  quality,  not  like  the  sound  of 
a  Boche  bomb,  and  I  wondered  if  it  might  be  a  gas 
or  a  flame  bomb.  When  I  went  back,  my  office  had 
gone.  A  French  bomb  had  fallen  upon  it.  Now  it 
would  have  been  tiresome  to  be  killed  by  that." 

Earlier  in  the  spring,  before  blossom  time,  while 
the  peasants  were  plowing  their  fields,  I  spent  a  day 


394  NEIGHBOES   HENCEFORTH 

in  the  St.  Mihiel  country.  Much  of  it  was  still  des- 
olate with  the  shell  holes  and  the  barbed  wire,  but 
here  and  there  were  stretches  that  had  been  re- 
claimed. The  earth  was  brown,  and  one  could  look 
deep  into  the  violet  grey  of  the  woods.  Where  the 
fields  rose  to  a  ridge,  the  horses  and  the  plowing 
peasants  showed  against  the  sky,  and  along  the  fur- 
rows went  the  sowers  with  their  bags,  flinging  their 
arms  with  a  forward  gesture  as  they  scattered  the 
seed.  Sometimes  I  got  out  and  talked  to  those  who 
were  near  the  road.  Often,  as  we  talked,  the  sound 
of  explosions  came  heavily  from  various  distances 
through  the  quiet  air,  and  the  clotted  pillars  of  their 
smoke  would  rise  and  hang  for  a  long  while.  Those 
were  the  live  grenades  left  in  the  soil  by  the  battles 
and  now  having  their  stings  drawn.  The  farm- 
ers were  sowing  oats  to  be  plowed  in  later,  and  there 
was  a  growth  of  a  bad  weed  named  chien  dent  to  be 
uprooted.  One  peasant  explained  that  no  one  dared 
to  plow  the  soil  deep. 

"Because,"  he  said,  "ce  n'est  pas  une  noce  to  hit 
an  obus.  Those  artificers  who  are  being  paid  35 
francs  a  day  to  explode  these  shells  are  very  unsys- 
tematic. They  ought  to  do  it  progressively,  like 
plowing,  but  they  run  here  and  there.  If  I  am  not 
blown  up,  after  my  oats  next  year,  I  shall  plant  pota- 
toes. It  will  take  me  3  or  4  years  to  get  my  ground 
clear  of  weeds.  Yesterday  I  plowed  up  two  obus,  but 
I  am  still  here,  as  you  see." 

On  the  way  back,  near  Verdun,  a  puncture  gave  me 
a  chance  for  a  longer  conversation  with  a  farmer  and 
his  wife.  One  of  their  buildings  was  a  complete  ruin, 
with  rusty  shells  lying  around  and  inside  of  it,  and 
wire  ran  tangled  through  the  grass.    They  were 


IDLE?    WELL   OFF?  395 

living  as  best  they  could  in  a  sort  of  hovel  near  by, 
where  the  woman  was  digging. 

''How  do  you  do,  madame?"  I  said,  "you  certainly 
were  not  here  during  the  war." 

"No,  monsieur,  we  were  refugees.,, 

"And  where?" 

"In  Touraine  first,  and  after  that  at  Montpellier. " 

"And  now  you  are  back  at  work.  Does  it  go 
well?" 

"It  is  very  hard  to  dig.  The  ground  is  full  of 
stones  and  tin  cans  and  saletes  de  toutes  especes." 

"Well,  madame,  I  hope  you  will  have  a  good 
harvest." 

"Oh,  yes,  monsieur,  everything  is  going  well." 

At  this  point  her  man  with  a  plow  and  two  mules 
came  up,  having  finished  work  for  the  day.  It  was  a 
very  light  and  a  very  poor  plow,  and  I  asked  him 
about  it. 

"Yes,  look  at  it,"  he  said,  with  a  sort  of  gruff 
joviality.  "Everything  is  very  dear  now.  Before 
the  war  that  cost  125  francs.  Now  700.  And  a  good 
mule  5,000  francs  now.  Before  the  war  800. — So  you 
are  American?" 

"Yes." 

"We  ought  to  have  got  some  of  those  big  animals 
that  you  left  behind.  They  would  have  done  our 
plowing  well.  But  other  people  .  .  .  "  he  com- 
pleted his  sentence  by  making  a  most  eloquent  and 
comical  curving  sweep  with  his  hand  behind  his  back, 
and  this  made  his  meaning  quite  plain. 

"  Alors  vous  etes  American?"  he  repeated  jovially, 
"Have  you  returned  to  make  some  more  war?" 

"Ah,  no!" 

He  stood  straight  and  stiff,  and  his  face  changed 


396  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

to  gravity.  "Well,"  he  said,  with  deliberation, 
"without  you,  this  would  be  Germany  today."  And 
he  pointed  down  to  the  earth. 

"We  are  very  glad  if  we  were  of  any  help,"  I  said. 

"This  would  be  Germany  if  you  had  not  come,"  he 
reiterated  with  emphasis. 

"They  should  have  invaded  Germany,"  said  I. 

"Yes." 

The  chauffeur  overheard  this. 

"That  is  true,"  he  said.  " Nothing  more  true. 
We  wished  to  go  on,  but  we  were  not  allowed.  Foch 
wept." 

"Yes,  I  have  heard  that  from  many.  General 
Pershing  wanted  to  go  on  too." 

That  is  the  France  which  I  saw  for  five  months  in 
1921,  and  which  some  said  (and  are  saying  still),  is 
idle,  prosperous,  and  militaristic.  Though  some  of 
those  that  have  represented  her  have  at  times  mani- 
fested impatience  at  the  treatment  she  has  received, 
and  the  perversions  of  her  true  position  which  have 
appeared  in  certain  newspapers  and  fallen  from  the 
lips  of  certain  public  men,  the  plain  truth  is  that  as 
a  nation  she  has  been  as  patient  with  England  about 
Germany  as  England  has  been  patient  with  America 
about  Ireland ;  and  that  is  saying  a  great  deal. 


XXVIII 

THE    BRAIN    OCT    ONE    DIMENSION 

All  through  History  are  incidents  which  to  their 
own  generation  have  seemed  important,  and  which 
have  dwindled  as  the  years  left  them  behind,  while 
the  significance  of  others  has  steadily  enlarged  with 
time.  To  this  latter  class  belong  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, the  invention  of  printing,  and  the  voyage  of 
Columbus.  When  we,  who  have  lived  so  close  to  the 
war  that  we  can  not  measure  it,  are  long  gone,  and  it 
has  fallen  into  the  motionless  landscape  of  the  past, 
what  will  it  seem  like  then?  Today  we  can  hardly 
believe  that  it  will  ever  cease  to  be  known  as  the  Great 
War ;  and  yet,  that  is  a  question  to  be  answered  then, 
and  not  now;  convulsions  more  gigantic  may  dwarf 
the  terrible  years  of  1914  to  1918.  But  as  time  goes 
on,  America's  act  in  1917  will  not  look  smaller.  It 
will  grow  in  two  ways,  in  relation  to  ourselves  and  in 
relation  to  our  neighbors.  We  had  risen  to  greatness 
before,  certainly  once,  paying  with  our  blood ;  but  to 
keep  the  Union  and  free  the  slave  was  an  act  accord- 
ing to  our  faith,  was  carrying  out  into  action  what  our 
religion  declared  and  compelled;  whereas  in  joining 
the  Great  War,  in  leaving  our  new  world  and  crossing 
the  sea  to  the  old,  we  ran  counter  to  an  article  of  our 
faith  so  deep  that  it  was  second  only  to  our  belief  in 
liberty  denned  and  assured  by  law.  Both  —  our 
liberty  and  our  isolation — have  been  woven  so  close  in 
our  minds  and  emotions  they  can  be  called  American 

397 


398  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

instincts.  And  yet  we  broke  from  the  second.  It 
was  like  tearing  apart  one 's  brain.  To  go  upon  our 
own  way,  to  mind  our  own  affairs,  to  keep  apart  from 
others'  quarrels,  to  stand  aloof  from  the  meshes  of 
foreign  jealousies,  this  course  had  been  set  for  us, 
had  been  preached  to  us  from  the  beginning,  and  it 
had  been  practised  throughout  a  century  of  success. 
Every  decade  of  our  national  life  had  ratified  and 
vindicated  the  wisdom  of  our  isolation;  and  yet  we 
wrenched  ourselves  loose  from  the  embedded  anchor. 
That  small  handful  of  Europeans  who  have  studied 
more  about  Americans  than  their  money,  know  this 
and  understand  that  to  take  such  a  step  cost  us  a  sort 
of  mental  revolution ;  they  know  that  our  delay  was 
inevitable,  beyond  our  control,  that  a  mental  revolu- 
tion in  a  hundred  million  people  is  not  accomplished 
in  a  moment ;  especially  under  the  powerful  and  con- 
fusing influences  that  were  at  work  in  our  midst, 
befogging  us  night  and  day.  Some  of  us,  who  saw 
where  our  duty  lay  sooner  than  the  mass,  have  been 
inclined  to  apologize  to  Europe  for  our  lateness.  No 
apologies  are  due,  except  from  those  Europeans  who 
still,  in  cold  blood  and  after  the  event,  have  sneered 
because  we  did  not  do  at  once  what  none  of  them  has 
ever  done  at  all  in  their  whole  history. 

One  conspicuous  demagogue  has  termed  the  Euro- 
pean conflict  a  rich  man 's  war  and  a  poor  man 's  fight. 
Those  Europeans  who  have  given  us  their  intelligent 
attention  know  that  we  fought  for  an  ideal,  that  it 
was  precisely  our  rich,  and  not  our  poor,  young  men 
who  threw  themselves  first  into  the  war  as  a  class, 
who  enlisted  in  the  Allied  armies,  who  formed  the 
Lafayette  Escadrille,  who  offered  themselves  to  the 
cause  of  Liberty  before  their  country  had  taken  the 


THE   BRAIN   OF   ONE   DIMENSION    399 

step,  who  did  not  wait  for  the  draft,  who  shouldered 
arms  before  the  hour  of  obligation,  and  whose  names 
now  shine  on  the  tablets  of  our  schools  and  colleges. 
It  was  our  sons  of  privilege  that  showed  themselves, 
as  a  class,  worthy  of  their  privilege,  whose  young 
eyes  discerned  in  1914  what  the  whole  country  came 
to  see  at  last.  Three  words,  spoken  by  one  of  these 
sons  of  privilege  as  he  lay  dying,  enshrine  the  whole 
truth,  the  reason  that  he  and  his  kind  went  at  once, 
never  waiting  for  any  call  but  the  call  from  within. 
He  came  from  one  of  our  great  preparatory  schools, 
he  Avas  a  Harvard  student,  he  enlisted  in  Canada,  he 
met  his  death  in  Europe.  In  the  hospital  where  he 
was  taken,  the  nurse  asked  him  how  it  happened  that 
he  was  in  the  war  when  his  country  was  neutral.  He 
answered : 

" Our  fight  too." 

The  sentence  is  a  parable.  No  orator,  no  states- 
man, no  poet,  could  better  say  why  America  broke 
from  that  second  article  of  her  belief  and  poured  her 
treasure  and  her  life  across  three  thousand  miles  of 
sea,  and  stood  ready  to  go  on  spending  herself  to  the 
last  dollar  and  the  last  drop  of  blood.  Nothing  in 
that  manifestation  of  our  soul  and  strength  more 
astonished  the  Europeans  than  how,  once  we  were 
aroused  and  aware,  we  accepted  conscription  and  re- 
quired no  law  to  enforce  our  self-denial.  Did  the 
Allies  need  sugar  or  flour !  We  went  without  them — 
it  was  the  kitchen,  not  the  dining  room  that  rebelled ; 
once  again  it  was  the  privileged  classes  that  saw  their 
duty  and  did  it.  If  oil  grew  scarce,  it  was  only  neces- 
sary to  tell  us,  and  thousands  gave  up  the  chief 
pleasure  in  their  week  and  left  their  automobiles  in 
the  garage  on  Sundays. 


400  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

No,  it  is  not  likely  that  our  part  in  the  war  will 
dwindle  as  it  grows  distant  in  time ;  and  the  essence 
of  the  internal  conflict  that  it  cost  us  will  be  seen  more 
clearly  than  it  is  today.  Although  we  departed  from 
our  creed  of  isolation,  that  very  departure  was  a  pas- 
sionate adherence  to  the  first  article  of  our  faith — to 
liberty,  defined  and  assured  by  law.  The  struggle 
was  between  those  two  principles,  and  the  fundamen- 
tal one  prevailed ;  for  in  the  last  analysis,  isolation  is 
not  a  fundamental,  but  a  temporary  principle,  and  it 
is  no  longer  a  question  of  our  renouncing  it — it  has 
renounced  us.  No  matter  how  much  some  of  us  may 
wish  it,  Americans  can  no  longer  enjoy  a  brain  of 
one  dimension.  It  is  not  going  to  be  a  question  of 
choice,  natural  laws  have  settled  it  for  us.  You  may 
push  facts  out  of  the  door,  they  will  come  in  at  the 
window.  A  natural  law  does  not  speak,  it  asserts 
itself  in  silence,  and  if  you  ignore  it  long  enough,  it 
will  grind  you  to  powder.  Here  we  reach  the  second 
aspect  of  our  part  in  the  war,  its  relation  not  to  our- 
selves but  to  others.  Of  those  four  years,  we  fought 
but  half  a  year ;  it  is  not  the  size  of  our  participation, 
but  its  consequences,  that  are  now  the  point. 

When  the  emergency  of  the  war  began  in  August 
1914,  we  looked  at  it  as  one  of  those  foreign  complica- 
tions with  which  Washington  told  us  to  have  nothing 
to  do.  By  August  1918,  nearly  two  million  Ameri- 
cans had  gone  to  fight  in  France.  We  had  been 
drawn  into  the  emergency.  Why?  Look  at  the  map, 
think  of  electricity  and  of  steam,  and  you  will  have 
the  answer.  Is  it  very  likely  that  Washington  in 
April  1917  would  still  have  advised  us  to  avoid  that 
foreign  complication1? 

Next,  the  war  was  over,  and  in  a  way,  won.    We 


THE   BRAIN   OF   ONE   DIMENSION    401 

thought  at  the  time  that  it  was  won  much  more  com- 
pletely than  the  ensuing  years  have  disclosed;  and 
with  a  deep  sigh  of  joy  and  content  our  country  came 
home — home  physically  and  mentally.  It  turned  its 
thoughts  again  to  itself,  and  there  was  indeed  plenty 
to  think  about.  But  the  emergency  of  the  war  has 
been  followed  by  the  emergency  of  the  peace.  That 
is  going  on  now ;  and  once  again  some  of  us  are  quot- 
ing "Washington.  We  can  no  more  keep  out  of  the 
present  foreign  complication  than  we  were  able  to 
hold  aloof  from  its  predecessor.  Just  as  much  as  that 
was,  this  is  "our  fight  too"  —  not  for  reasons  of 
sentiment,  but  for  reasons  of  self-preservation. 
Why?  Look  at  the  map,  think  of  electricity  and 
steam,  and  again  you  will  have  the  answer.  War  and 
peace  are  merely  different  processes  of  self-preserva- 
tion, different  means  by  which  nations  control  and 
protect  their  existence,  manage  their  affairs,  survive. 
We  like  to  hope  that  peace  will  some  day  be  the  only 
method  by  which  nations  live ;  but  whether  this  comes 
to  pass  or  not,  if  the  fundamental  state  of  the  world 
is  changed,  and  a  great  war  draws  everybody  into  its 
emergency,  the  emergencies  of  peace  are  bound  to  do 
exactly  the  same  thing. 

It  would  be  good  news  if  we  did  not  have  to  think 
about  Europe  as  a  concern  of  our  own,  if  foreign 
complications  could  be  pushed  out  of  our  reckoning, 
if  we  could  return  to  our  brain  of  one  dimension. 
But  that  comfortable  day  is  done,  and  the  truth  is, 
that  the  word  "foreign"  has  ceased  to  have  any 
economic  or  political  meaning ;  in  that  sense,  there  is 
little  that  is  foreign  in  the  world  any  more.  We  are 
all  neighbors  in  the  same  street,  and  neighbors  hence- 
forth it  is  our  destiny  to  be. 


402  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

I  do  not  wonder  that  great  portions  of  our  people 
sincerely  believe  what  I  wish  that  I  could  believe — 
that  our  going  over  to  Europe  was  an  accident,  an 
exception,  a  parenthesis  in  our  isolation,  a  closed  inci- 
dent; and  that  now  we  can  resume  our  development 
and  attend  to  our  own  housekeeping,  and  never  think 
of  Europe,  or  any  other  part  of  the  world,  again 
except  when  it  pleases  us  to  do  so  as  a  market  for 
our  wares,  a  playground  for  our  holidays,  or  an 
object  of  our  voluntary  compassion  and  assistance, 
like  Belgium.  I  wish  they  were  right,  I  wish  it  were 
true.  When  I  think  of  our  pioneers,  our  backwoods- 
men, our  cowboys,  I  have  a  home-sick  longing  to  be 
back  in  their  simple  day,  and  I  desire  to  turn  my 
face  away  from  the  welter  that  Europe  is  in — the 
deceits,  the  jealousies,  the  greed  of  conquest,  the 
flare  of  discord,  the  collapse  of  prosperity.  We  are 
no  more  responsible  for  that  state  of  things  than 
we  were  for  the  war ;  why  saddle  ourselves  with  the 
burdens  of  others  when  we  have  enough  of  our  own 
to  carry  already?  Let  Europe  be  satisfied  with  the 
help  we  gave  her  in  1918,  and  settle  her  present 
troubles  for  herself.  That  is  what  many  Americans 
are  saying  and  feeling,  and  it  would  make  a  strong 
argument,  if  isolation  were  a  matter  of  choice  in 
these  days  as  it  was  in  the  days  when  George  Wash- 
ington wrote  that  Farewell  Address  which  is  being 
so  freely  quoted  and  misquoted  just  now  on  the  sub- 
ject of  entangling  alliances. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  how  remarkably  little  we  quote 
or  follow  a  certain  other  piece  of  advice  which  Wash- 
ington gave  us  in  that  same  Farewell  Address — that 
we  should  avoid  occasions  of  expense  by  cultivating 
peace,  "but  remembering  also  that  timely  disburse- 


THE  BRAIN  OF   ONE   DIMENSION    403 

ments  to  prepare  for  danger  frequently  prevent  much 
greater  disbursements  to  repel  it."  Not  once  in 
our  history  have  we  followed  that  wise  counsel;  on 
the  contrary,  Congress  has  steadily  opposed  and  ob- 
structed preparedness  for  war ;  and  every  war  which 
we  have  fought  has  caught  us  with  our  clothes  off. 
The  hasty  toilet  that  we  were  compelled  to  make  on 
the  last  occasion,  in  1917,  could  not  have  been  made 
at  all  if  the  British  fleet  had  not  stood  between  us 
and  the  enemy  like  a  wall,  behind  which  we  were 
able  to  cover  our  nakedness  before  it  was  too  late. 
Some  day  it  may  be  too  late.  As  it  is,  we  are  suffer- 
ing from  a  heavy  burden  of  taxes,  due  to  the  hurry 
in  which  we  had  to  get  ready  at  the  eleventh  hour, 
and  which  might  have  been  averted,  had  Congress 
and  Mr.  Wilson  heeded  the  advice  of  George  Wash- 
ington, instead  of  heaping  every  champion  of  pre- 
paredness, such  as  Augustus  Gardner,  or  Leonard 
Wood,  with  falsehood,  sneers,  and  abuse.  Against 
stupidity  the  gods  themselves  contend  in  vain;  and 
our  politicians  are  quick  to  remember  George  Wash- 
ington when  they  can  use  him  for  something  that 
they  like  because  it  is  easy  and  will  cost  them  no 
votes,  but  they  find  it  convenient  to  forget  him  when 
his  advice  is  disagreeable  to  them.  Consequently  in 
these  present  days  they  are  placing  in  front  of  the 
gloomy  truth  that  America  can  no  longer  play  a  lone 
hand  but  must  do  team-work  with  Europe,  the  cheer- 
ful falsehood  that  Washington  forbade  team-work. 

What  did  Washington  really  say  about  Europe 
and  its  relation  to  us  in  his  Farewell  Address! 

''Europe  has  a  set  of  primary  interests  which  to 
us  have  none,  or  a  very  remote  relation.  Hence  she 
must  be  engaged  in  frequent  controversies,  the  causes 


404  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

of  which  are  essentially  foreign  to  our  concerns. 
Hence,  therefore,  it  must  be  nnwise  in  us  to  implicate 
ourselves,  by  artificial  ties,  in  the  ordinary  vicissi- 
tudes of  her  politics,  or  the  ordinary  combinations 
and  collisions  of  her  friendships  or  enmities. 

"Our  detached  and  distant  situation  invites  and 
enables  us  to  pursue  a  different  course.  If  we  remain 
one  people,  under  an  efficient  government,  the  period 
is  not  far  off  when  we  may  defy  material  injury  from 
external  arrogance ;  when  we  may  take  such  an  atti- 
tude as  will  cause  the  neutrality  we  may  at  any  time 
resolve  upon  to  be  scrupulously  respected.  .  .  . 

"Why  forego  the  advantages  of  so  peculiar  a  situa- 
tion? Why  quit  our  own  to  stand  upon  foreign 
ground?  Why,  by  interweaving  our  destiny  with 
that  of  any  part  of  Europe,  entangle  our  peace  and 
prosperity  in  the  toils  of  European  ambition,  rival- 
ship,  interest,  humor,  or  caprice? 

"  'Tis  our  true  policy  to  steer  clear  of  permanent 
alliances  with  any  portion  of  the  foreign  world  .  .  . 
we  may  safely  trust  to  temporary  alliances  for  ex- 
traordinary emergencies.  .  .  . 

"There  can  be  no  greater  error  than  to  expect 
or  calculate  upon  real  favors  from  nation  to  nation." 

That  is  every  word  which  the  Farewell  Address 
contains  on  the  subject  of  alliances;  and  this  docu- 
ment, dated  19th  September,  1796,  is  being  offered 
to  us  as  a  guide  in  1922,  with  its  language  about 
foreign  alliances  generally  misquoted.  Why  not  ask 
us  to  wear  knee  breeches  and  a  wig  because  Wash- 
ington wore  them?  In  the  first  place,  he  expressly 
admitted  temporary  alliances  for  extraordinary 
emergencies,  and  in  the  second  place  his  whole 
thought  is  naturally  based  on  the  world  as  it  was  in 


THE   BEAIN   OF   ONE   DIMENSION    405 

1796.  They  pay  a  very  poor  compliment  to  the 
marvellously  observant  and  far-sighted  sagacity  of 
the  Father  of  his  Country,  when  they  apply  his  re- 
marks to  1922,  and  assume  that  he  would  repeat  them 
unchanged.  In  his  time,  it  took  nearly  two  months 
to  send  a  message  to  Europe  and  receive  an  answer ; 
today  it  can  be  done  in  a  few  hours.  Would  Wash- 
ington call  Europe  remote  now?  Would  he  speak 
of  our  " detached  and  distant  situation' '  after  seeing 
an  aeroplane,  and  a  submarine,  and  the  Baldwin 
Locomotive  Works,  or  any  other  works  which  sell 
our  wares  all  over  the  world? 

When  he  was  notified  of  his  unanimous  election  as 
President  in  April  1789,  Washington  set  out  from 
Mt.  Vernon  on  the  16th  and  reached  New  York  on 
the  23d.  Had  some  neighbors  in  Virginia  at  that 
time  asked  him  how  long  one  should  allow  for  a  com- 
fortable journey  to  New  York,  the  answer  would 
have  been  seven  days ;  and  as  Washington  was  care- 
ful about  details,  he  would  have  told  the  neighbor 
where  he  would  find  the  best  lodging  for  the  night  at 
the  end  of  each  day's  journey.  Since  then  London 
has  been  reached  in  seven  days  by  many  steamers. 
To  suppose  that  he  would  give  us  today  the  same 
advice  about  Europe  that  he  gave  in  1796,  is  precisely 
as  sensible  as  to  suppose  that  he  would  tell  a  friend 
that  it  would  take  a  week  to  go  from  Mt.  Vernon  to 
New  York,  instead  of  recommending  the  express 
trains  that  do  it  now  in  five  hours. 

Washington's  outlook  was  not  narrowed  by  a  brain 
of  one  dimension;  he  thought  internationally,  his 
policy  was  not  shackled  to  obsolete  conditions. 
Scarcely  more  than  ten  years  after  our  Revolution, 
he  declined  to  fall  in  with  the  wishes  of  France,  who 


406  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

had  been  our  friend,  and  made  a  treaty  with  Eng- 
land, who  had  been  our  enemy.  For  this  he  was 
violently  abused  by  the  brains  of  one  dimension  of 
that  day,  until  the  good  results  that  followed  from 
his  wise  policy  put  them  to  silence.  If  the  changes 
in  conditions  after  ten  years  could  cause  such  a 
change  in  Washington's  mind,  it  is  hardly  worth 
while  to  try  to  fit  to  the  present  day  a  piece  of  advice 
given  126  years  ago  based  upon  conditions  that  are 
no  longer  the  same. 

When  we  bee;an  our  national  life,  the  total  popu- 
lation of  the  13  original  states  was  less  than  that  of 
the  city  of  New  York  today;  we  exported  nothing, 
the  few  articles  that  we  made,  such  as  glass,  were 
of  local  use;  our  thin  population  was  scattered  in 
unrelated  spots  from  New  Hampshire  to  Georgia, 
with  miles  of  uninhabited  wilderness  lying  between 
them :  travel  on  land  was  bv  horse,  on  water  it  was 
by  sail.  Similarly  at  that  time,  the  whole  world  was 
inhabited  in  spots,  no  wires  or  rails  tied  nations 
togpthpr.  the  tides  of  trade  and  intercourse  were  few, 
and  like  thin  streams,  compared  to  the  thick  volume 
that  pours  back  and  forth  between  all  countries  now. 
Todav,  distance  and  time  are  virtually  obliterated 
by  electricity,  Europe  and  America  are  no  longer 
snots  with  space  between  them;  they  are  confluent, 
with  thousands  of  veins  and  arteries  of  commerce 
and  crpdit  flowing  through  them,  makina:  them  like 
parts  of  one  bodv.  If  one  nation  falls  a  victim  to  anv 
gravo  and  nrolonsred  economic  disease,  the  rest  will 
suffer  in  time  just  as  inevitablv  as  blood  poisoning 
in  a  man's  fin  irer  will  infect  his  whole  system  if  it  is 
not  checked.  Like  neighbors  in  the  same  street,  the 
nations  of  Europe  and  America  depend  for  their  wel- 


THE   BRAIN  OF   ONE   DIMENSION    407 

fare  more  and  more  upon  the  same  set  of  supplies, 
supplies  of  meat,  grain,  coal,  hardware,  and  credit, 
especially  credit;  in  this  essential  above  all  they 
can  not  get  on  without  team-work.  If  Europe  goes 
bankrupt,  disaster  will  flow  through  the  arteries  of 
trade  and  attack  us  too.  The  American  who  shuts 
his  eyes  to  this  because  it  is  a  fact  which  jars  his 
ideal  of  isolation,  is  like  a  man  who  puts  off  making 
his  will  because  it  is  unpleasant  to  be  reminded  that 
he  is  not  going  to  live  for  ever. 

As  America  was  compelled  to  take  notice  of  the 
war,  and  submit  to  team-work  in  order  to  prevent 
a  catastrophe  that  in  the  end  would  have  reached 
her  as  well  as  England  and  France,  she  will  have  to 
continue  her  team-work  henceforth.  She  can  never 
break  away  again.  Catastrophes  are  not  over,  and 
it  is  as  unlikely  that  they  will  ever  cease  in  the  future 
as  that  they  ever  ceased  in  the  past.  The  great 
difference  between  the  future  and  the  past  is,  that 
nations  used  to  be  able  to  have  catastrophes  by  them- 
selves, without  one  toppling  brick  pushing  down  the 
whole  row.  Consequently,  we  must  join  hands  with 
Europe  to  fight  all  disasters  that  threaten. 

And  we  shall  play  the  part  of  creditor  gracefully  if 
Europe  plays  the  debtor's  part  gracefully:  it  isn't 
pretty  for  him  who  stretches  out  his  hand  to  be 
shaking  his  fist,  or  even  his  finger. 

The  signs  are  good.  I  can  remember  that  long 
after  I  was  grown  up  it  was  a  rare  thing  to  hear 
foreign  news  discussed  by  Americans  of  any  class. 
It  is  now  the  subject  of  daily  conversation,  not  only 
in  marble  halls  but  in  street  cars.  In  the  Back  Bay 
station  in  Boston,  there  is  a  boot-black  who  comments 
on  France  and  Germany  and  Mr.  Lloyd  George  while 


408  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

he  polishes  my  shoes ;  when  I  was  an  under-graduate 
I  could  have  walked  the  length  of  Beacon  Street  with 
its  most  leading  citizen  and  never  touched  once  upon 
foreign  affairs.  That  is  because  in  those  days,  affairs 
could  still  be  foreign,  while  now  the  word  foreign  is 
growing  obsolete.  As  Columbus  discovered  us  we 
are  now  obliged  to  discover  Europe. 

In  his  day,  the  world  was  said  to  be  flat.  When 
he  proved  that  it  was  round  a  number  of  persons 
were  highly  scandalized.  Today  a  number  of  Ameri- 
cans are  highly  scandalized  to  hear  that  our  isolation 
is  done  for.  But  I  do  not  think  that  the  brain  of 
one  dimension  is  going  to  prevail  now  in  the  peace, 
any  more  than  it  did  during  the  war.  It  came  dread- 
fully near  it,  but  it  failed.  We  played  team-work 
in  time.  We  must  not  be  too  late  now,  and  we  shall 
not  be.  In  some  form,  worked  out  by  our  men  of 
affairs  collaborating  with  our  government,  we  shall 
bear  a  hand  again  to  England  and  France.  Nothing 
must  happen  to  either  of  them.  Whatever  rough- 
nesses there  may  be,  they  are  the  salt  of  the  earth. 
The  danger  that  hung  black  over  them  when  we  came 
in  1917  has  been  replaced  by  another  danger,  they 
barely  keep  their  heads  above  water.  If  they  sink 
they  are  certain  to  drag  us  down  with  them.  For 
our  own  preservation  we  must  throw  them  a  life- 
preserver. 

And  not  only  for  that  reason !  In  those  moments 
when  France  and  England  are  at  their  best,  they 
see  a  best  in  us  that  is  not  merely  material.  We 
have  money,  yes ;  but  they  know  and  we  know  (when 
all  are  at  their  best)  that  beyond  and  above  money 
there  is  that  imponderable  thing  which  outweighs 
all  gold.    It  is  hard  to  name;  the  word  ideal  has 


THE  BRAIN   OF   ONE   DIMENSION    409 

been  over-used ;  but  it  is  what  made  us  free  the  slave, 
set  Cuba  free,  and  come  to  help  them  in  1917.  It 
is  the  thing  that  built  Westminster  Abbey,  and  the 
cathedral  of  Amiens,  and  made  Washington  come 
to  New  York  to  be  President,  when  what  his  heart 
craved  was  to  rest  at  Mt.  Vernon  beneath  his  own 
vine  and  fig  tree. 


XXIX 

CAN  THESE  BONES  LIVE  f 

It  is  not  alone  in  Flanders  fields  that  poppies  blow 
between  the  crosses.  From  Paschendael  and  the 
Lys,  over  the  Somme  and  Aisne,  across  the  Argonne 
and  past  Komagne  and  the  Meuse  and  Moselle  to 
Massevaux,  the  dead  lie  everywhere ;  the  young  dead 
of  many  languages,  whose  spirits  at  the  end  spoke 
a  tongue  universal.  What  they  wrote  to  their 
mothers  in  a  legion  of  letters  that  have  gone  to  homes 
all  over  the  world  would  have  been  understood  by 
every  mother  bereaved  of  a  son.  Whether  these  last 
messages  went  to  Warwickshire,  or  Inverness,  or 
Dauphine,  or  Ontario,  or  to  the  lands  of  the  far  Pa- 
cific, they  could  almost  be  exchanged  by  those  who 
received  them,  so  much  do  they  all  say  the  same  thing. 
Their  writers,  while  still  in  this  life,  had  passed 
beyond  these  voices  to  a  life  where  what  was  terror 
and  horror  to  us  who  read  of  it,  was  to  them  a  state 
of  serene  and  even  happy  dedication  to  the  will  of 
God.  As  one  passes  their  graves,  and  again  more 
graves,  and  then  still  more,  out  in  the  open  stretches, 
along  the  sheltering  edges  of  groves,  on  the  slopes 
of  hills,  among  plowed  fields  or  growing  harvests, 
or  near  some  lovely  ancient  spire,  the  silence  of 
France  is  filled  with  the  memory  of  them,  and  to  each 
of  those  quiet  hearts  one  applies  the  words  that  are 
graven  on  the  stone  of  a  certain  boy  who  lies  in  a 
field  of  Tardenois : 

He  has  outsoared  the  darkness  of  our  night. 

410 


CAN   THESE   BONES   LIVE?  411 

Thirty-three  hundred  British  cemeteries  are  in 
France ;  we  have  four. 

Much  thought,  much  art,  much  care,  went  to  the 
shaping  of  these  cities  of  the  British  dead.  They 
are  very  beautiful,  and  simple  reverence  lives  among 
their  paths  and  growing  flowers,  and  consolation 
almost  visible  seems  to  be  waiting  for  every  soul 
who  comes  there  in  need.  Each  body  that  lies  in 
them  rests  in  the  company  of  comrades,  near  the 
very  spot  where  all  offered  together  their  last  and 
highest  sacrifice  to  the  same  great  cause,  and  upon 
the  soil  that  all  helped  together  to  save.  To  visit 
these  assembled  dead,  come  the  living  all  through  the 
year,  each  to  seek  some  special  grave.  They  take 
away  a  rich  and  twofold  solace ;  they  have  seen  how 
fittinglv  the  ashes  dear  to  them  are  tended,  and  they 
have  felt  the  great  unison  of  sacredness  which  comes 
from  all  these  soldiers'  graves,  and  is  shed  upon 
each  one.  Thev  tell  others  what  they  have  seen,  and 
of  the  peaoe  which  the  sight  has  brought  them;  and 
so  to  mothers  in  Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand, 
and  every  British  land  across  the  world  is  wafted 
soon  or  late  the  knowledge  that  it  is  well  with  their 
boys. 

Along  the  roads  from  Ypres  to  Massevaux,  to  right 
and  left  all  the  way,  the  signs  come  by :  British  Ceme- 
tery, French  Cemeterv,  Canadian,  Australian,  and 
sometimes  American  Cemetery;  we  still  have  four. 
From  our  chief  one  at  Eomagne,  where  once  lay  all 
our  dead  of  the  Meuse-Argonne,  not  quite  one-half 
were  taken  from  where  they  rested  together,  and 
were  dispersed  to  rest  alone,  far  away  over  the  sea, 
in  company  that  had  not  shared  their  errand  or  their 
sacrifice.     Over  the  happy  remnant  at  Romagne, 


412  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

France  will  bow  her  head  on  sacred  days  when  she 
remembers  and  honors  her  own  sons,  through  all  the 
years  to  come.  If  Britain,  whose  killed  were  eight 
hundred  thousand,  counts  thirty-three  hundred  ceme- 
teries, how  many  must  France  possess,  whose  dead 
were  not  far  from  twice  as  many?  But  America 
still  has  four;  and  France  will  not  forget  them  on 
her  sacred  days. 

To  see  those  British  cemeteries  that  are  finished, 
gives  one  the  wish  that  one  had  the  right  to  lie  there 
too.  The  quiet  and  beautiful  holiness  that  their 
paths  and  flowers  and  similar  headstones  make  is  like 
nothing  I  have  ever  seen.  The  headstones  are  all 
alike,  proportioned  with  excellent  skill,  expressing 
dignity  and  simplicity;  no  upstart  column  or  spike 
of  vanity  mars  the  solemn  and  sweet  concord  of  the 
whole.  One  is  moved  to  linger,  one  is  led  to  read 
one  name  after  another.  Beautiful  is  the  inscrip- 
tion without  a  name : 

IN  HONOR  OF  A 
BRITISH  SOLDIER 
NAME  UNKNOWN. 

2nd  July,  1916 


KNOWN  UNTO  GOD. 

The  lettering  and  the  graceful  proportions  of  the 
cross  reveal  the  same  thought  and  art  which  are  to 
be  seen  in  every  detail  throughout. 


CAN   THESE   BONES   LIVE?  413 

These  thirty-three  hundred  cemeteries  are  laid  out, 
furnished,  and  maintained  by  subordinate  camps 
which  depend  upon  the  general  headquarters  at  St. 
Omer.  The  local  camps  are  established  in  each  of 
the  regions  into  which  the  whole  territory  of  the 
British  dead  is  divided.  From  these  are  issued  the 
headstone  and  the  plants  and  other  supplies,  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  directions  from  St.  Omer.  At  the 
camp  in  Bethune,  for  instance,  is  a  nursery  for 
plants ;  and  in  1920  one-quarter  of  a  million  of  these 
were  distributed  from  here  for  the  graveyards  in 
that  special  region.  At  St.  Omer  are  the  various 
departments  which  plan  and  superintend  severally 
the  laying  out  of  each  ground,  its  grading  and  shap- 
ing in  relation  to  its  environment,  its  planting  with 
trees  and  shrubs,  its  decoration  with  flowers,  and  its 
paths  and  arrangement  of  headstones,  and  the  war 
stone  and  war  cross. 

Some  cemeteries  are  larger ;  the  one  named  TYN- 
COT  on  Paschendael  Ridge  contains  15,000  dead, 
while  others  are  like  country  churchyards  in  size. 
For  the  2,000  Chinese  I  saw  some  of  the  headstones 
at  Bethune,  lettered  with  their  alphabet  and  carved 
with  symbols  strange  to  a  Western  eye ;  but  with  the 
date  and  a  text  in  English.  These  dead  have  to  be 
buried  with  their  feet  towards  water,  in  accordance 
with  their  oriental  faith.  Among  the  English  graves 
at  Heilly  were  those  of  some  German  prisoners, 
tended  with  the  same  care  and  respect ;  and  an  altar 
which  had  been  raised  above  these  bore  this  sentence : 

O  freund  wenn  du  nach  Deutchland  Kommst 
erzahle  dass  uns  liegen  sahst 
den  Gesetzen  unseres  Landes  getreu. 


414  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

At  Louvencourt,  English,  French,  and  Flemish 
words  were  on  the  signs  of  a  finished  cemetery,  where 
the  war  cross  and  war  stone  were  in  place,  and  around 
and  beneath  them,  enclosed  by  the  completed  stone 
wall,  generals,  gunners,  surgeons,  lieutenants,  trum- 
peters, drivers,  able  seamen — all  ranks  were  lying 
beside  each  other,  in  the  same  majestic  level  of  death. 
The  emblems  of  their  regiments  were  carved  above 
them  on  each  headstone,  turf  was  green  upon  the 
walks.  English  daisies  grew  in  it,  and  flowers  grew 
round  the  graves.  It  was  Sunday,  and  the  bells  of 
Louvencourt  were  ringing  as  I  walked  about  and  read 
the  names. 

How  came  there  to  be  able  seamen  in  so  many  of 
these  cemeteries ;  privates  of  the  Royal  Naval  Divi- 
sion, which  was  the  63d?  Because  they  had  come 
from  Gallipoli.  Battalions  named  after  ships  and 
admirals  were  organized  for  Gallipoli  and  employed 
there  for  beach  duty,  the  landing  of  supplies  and 
men.  Afterwards  they  were  proud  to  be  turned  into 
a  fighting  division ;  and  so  these  able  seamen  retained 
their  description  but  became  soldiers  and  met  their 
deaths  on  dry  land. 

The  graves  in  the  little  plot  at  Warloy-Baillou 
were  beneath  old  apple  trees,  and  once  I  was  there 
when  the  blossoms  were  at  the  full,  and  petals  from 
them  fell  quietly  now  and  then  upon  the  dead.  Some 
of  the  trees  were  failing,  and  there  had  been  a  thought 
of  planting  cypress  or  yew  or  other  churchyard 
tree  in  their  stead;  but  this  has  been  changed,  and 
apple  trees  will  always  grow  here  and  spread  their 
branches  and  blossoms  over  these  graves. 

Scarce  a  mile  away  from  this  cluster  of  the  dead 
was  the  cemetery  of  Forceville,  also  small,  and  also 


CAN   THESE   BONES   LIVE?  415 

complete.  I  returned  to  it  very  often,  because  it  is 
not  far  from  Amiens,  and  in  no  other  that  I  visited 
did  reverence  and  consolation  seem  more  present. 
If  the  dead  know  and  care  where  they  lie,  those  that 
are  here  must  be  content;  and  the  living  who  have 
come  to  see  this  place  in  anguish  and  agitation,  be- 
cause it  held  the  dust  they  mourned,  have  gone  away 
with  spirits  calmed.  This  I  was  told  on  the  spot. 
Mothers  have  arrived  there  in  winter  time,  dis- 
traught, out  of  themselves,  asking  wild  privileges; 
they  must  see  their  dead,  the  earth  must  be  opened, 
they  must  know  how  it  is  with  him;  perhaps  he  is 
cold ;  she  would  like  to  make  a  fire  for  him.  Wilder 
prayers  than  this  were  made.  After  a  little  while, 
with  that  war  cross,  and  that  war  stone,  in  that  holi- 
ness that  hangs  over  those  clustered  dead,  generals, 
trumpeters,  surgeons,  able  seamen,  she  has  found  her 
self-control,  she  has  not  raved  any  more,  she  has 
felt  the  strange  peace  of  loss,  and  has  said  that  now 
when  at  home  again  and  thinking  of  it,  she  would 
not  worry  any  more. 

He  is  dead  and  gone,  lady, 

He  is  dead  and  gone; 
At  his  head  a  grass  green  turf, 

At  his  heels  a  stone. 

Against  this  graveyard  is  an  old  French  one  with 
high  trees  in  it.  As  you  approach  from  the  road 
you  pass  along  the  hedge  by  the  French  graves,  and 
there  among  these  is  a  single  new  one,  a  British 
soldier.  A  splintered  tree  stump,  a  foot  high  and 
soon  to  be  hidden  with  growing  leaves,  juts  up  close 
by.  He  had  seen  the  shell  coming  and  stepped  be- 
hind the  tree,  and  along  with  it  he  was  dashed  to 


416  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

fragments.  What  could  be  found  was  buried  here. 
A  few  steps  more,  and  you  come  to  the  stone  gate 
where  the  British  are.  You  pass  under  its  arch, 
through  the  solemn  swinging  door  of  iron  bars  that 
show  the  peace  within,  and  there  the  turf,  the  flowers, 
the  headstones,  the  decent  order,  possess  you  at  once. 
The  war  cross  rises  high,  but  not  too  far  above  your 
head;  first  its  pedestal,  and  then  its  slender  shaft 
of  stone,  symmetric,  perfect,  eloquent  without  words, 
nothing  on  it  but  a  long  slender  sword  in  bronze. 
It  holds  the  eye,  it  compels  to  silence.  It  presides 
at  one  end  of  a  turf  walk  that  runs  through  the  mid- 
dle of  the  ground  to  the  war  stone  at  the  other  end. 
This  is  like  an  altar,  and  behind  it,  as  long  as 
itself,  a  great  stone  bench,  both  again  compelling  to 
silence.  They  seem  to  stand  for  that  greater  thing 
of  which  Christianity  is  but  the  latest  part.  The 
war  stone  and  the  cross  mingle  their  influences,  which 
seem  to  flow  from  them,  and  bathe  the  headstones 
benignly.  Beyond  the  war  stone,  over  the  wall,  a 
field  stretches  away  into  quietness;  beyond  the  war 
cross,  over  the  opposite  wall,  stretches  another  field 
but  a  little  way  to  the  trees  at  the  village  edge,  and 
through  these  rise  the  quiet  rustic  roofs,  and  an  old 
steeple.  To  one  side  lies  the  French  cemetery,  and 
a  field  to  the  other;  so  is  the  whole  place  set  and 
framed  in  trannuility.  As  one  stands  and  looks  at 
this  handful  of  British  dead  in  France,  thought  goes 
beyond  them  and  their  headstones,  the  gunners  and 
trumpeters,  to  Thermonyljp,  to  Sfdamis,  to  Water- 
loo, to  Gettysburg,  to  Verdun.  All  are  of  the  same 
company.  France  is  the  home  of  those  at  Forceville 
who  died  in  thp  battle  of  the  Somme,  at  Paschendael 
of  those  who  fell  in  Flanders  fields,  at  Romagne  of 


CAN   THESE    BONES    LIVE?  417 

those  who  fell  in  the  Meuse-Argonne;  and  France 
will  care  for  them  all  perpetually,  as  for  her  own, 
whether  Calgary,  Melbourne,  or  Omaha  was  their 
birthplace,  and  no  matter  what  their  name  or  speech 
or  faith;  she  is  the  true  home  of  them  all,  and  to 
her  dust  does  their  dust  belong. 

This  is  what  our  brains  of  one  dimension  could 
not  see:  that  if  all  the  rest  of  the  dead  were  to  lie 
in  France,  it  would  be  exile  for  ours  to  be  brought 
away  from  that  great  companionship.  Ours  alone 
have  been  brought  from  the  sacred  circle  of  all  na- 
tions, and  are  now  dispersed  over  a  wide  continent 
that  did  not  witness  their  sacrifice  or  share  their 
conflict.  They  lie  apart  from  each  other,  instead  of 
in  a  place  consecrated  especially  to  them,  and  they 
will  be  inevitably  forgotten  when  those  who  mourn 
them  now  are  followed  to  the  tomb  themselves  and 
in  their  turn  forgotten.  Could  those  exiled  bones  of 
our  soldiers  speak  through  the  ground  to  those  who 
visit  them  now,  there  are  few  indeed  who  would  not 
say: 

"Mother,  did  no  one  tell  you  that  I  said  I  wanted 
to  stay  with  the  boys?" 

Sad  women  all  over  the  rest  of  the  world  know  that 
remembrance  and  honor  will  continue  to  salute  their 
assembled  dead,  when  not  a  flower  or  a  thought  is 
any  longer  given  to  the  dispersed  exiles  here. 

More  than  two  million  lie  in  France  between  Flan- 
ders fields  and  Massevaux.  When  they  died,  nations 
were  lifted  as  high  above  their  week-day  mood  of 
getting  and  spending  as  they  have  fallen  below  it 
since.  Sometimes,  very  often  today,  as  one  reads 
the  morning  news,  one  has  to  remember  those  ceme- 
teries and  the  towers  of  Reims  and  Amiens  rising 


418  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

above  that  devastated  land,  in  order  not  to  fall  into 
despair.  From  what  goes  on,  there  is  temptation 
to  believe  that  mankind  spent  its  last  drop  of  nobility 
in  the  war,  and  has  nothing  left  but  its  baseness. 
This  is  not  true  now  any  more  than  it  has  ever  been. 
Amiens  and  Reims  have  stood  through  many  tides. 
Other  temples  that  are  crushed  only  made  way  for 
them,  as  their  place  will  be  taken  by  still  others. 
What  passes  is  the  Inn;  what  remains  is  the  soul 
which  builds  the  Inn  and  dwells  there,  but  for  a  time 
only.  Those  two  million  bodies  in  France  prove  the 
existence  of  that  soul.  Just  now  it  seems  stifled  and 
extinct,  as  it  has  often  seemed  before,  when  other 
bodies  in  other  battlefields  had  proved  its  existence. 

1 '  Come  from  the  four  winds,  0  breath,  and  breathe 
upon  these  slain,  that  they  may  live.,, 

We  must  not  expect  to  live  above  our  week-day 
level  for  any  long  time  together ;  but  may  that  level 
rise,  as  the  growth  of  pity  shows  it  has  risen.  If  it 
is  to  sink,  if  the  dead  have  died  for  no  gain  at  all  to 
the  world,  the  world  were  best  unpeopled.  Stray 
hints  and  projects  of  a  next  war  are  given,  a  conflict 
waged  with  forces  of  destruction  let  loose  by  men  who 
never  see  each  other;  new  germs  of  pestilence  set 
going,  which  leave  no  living  to  bury  the  dead,  new 
gases  made  from  the  minerals  and  acids  of  the  earth, 
that  with  a  puff  blow  out  the  breath  of  a  city. 

To  believe  that  wars  will  ever  wholly  cease  while 
man  is  here  is  hard;  but  if  that  is  to  be  war,  if 
nothing  but  more  means  for  destruction  have  been 
learned,  if  that  alone  is  what  science  and  human 
minds  are  making  ready  for,  then  may  the  annihila- 
tion be  complete!  Let  not  only  London  and  Paris 
and  Berlin  and  New  York,  and  all  near  and  far,  but 


CAN   THESE   BONES   LIVE?  419 

Asia  and  Africa  and  every  inhabitant  of  the  globe, 
old  and  young,  be  extinguished,  and  so  be  rendered 
incapable  of  further  abuses  of  science.  Then  only  the 
wild  animals  will  inhabit  the  earth: — the  wild  ani- 
mals, who,  although  they  fight  to  kill,  at  least  fight 
with  tooth  and  claw,  whose  instinct  for  combat  is  at 
least  redeemed  by  personal  courage ;  who  do  not  pol- 
lute the  streams,  who  do  not  burn  and  fell  the  forests, 
or  despoil  the  caves  of  the  planet  of  their  coal  and 
gold;  who  leave  Niagara  to  flow  in  its  natural 
majesty,  who  disfigure  no  mountain,  and  blacken  no 
valley;  who  are  innocent  of  chemicals  and  poison — 
the  wild  animals,  whose  character  is  honester  than 
men's  because  they  have  no  souls  to  corrupt  and 
degrade,  and  who  come  into  the  world  and  go  from  it, 
leaving  it  unmanned. 

That  would  be  best,  if  the  Spirit  of  Knowledge 
prove  for  ever  hostile  to  the  Spirit  of  Life.  Each 
time  it  has  won  and  religion  has  gone  wholly  down, 
the  civilization  where  such  triumph  occurred  has 
perished.  Better  a  world  without  man,  if  that  is 
to  be  the  end.  We  can  not  know;  but  we  can  be 
calm,  and  wait  until  the  bruised  nerves  which  the 
years  from  1914  to  1918  gave  us  all  have  recovered. 
There  have  always  been  an  Amiens  and  a  Reims  to 
symbolize  the  Spirit  of  Life;  never  yet  has  there 
been  a  race  wise  enough  to  keep  the  hostile  Spirit 
of  Knowledge  in  its  place.  That  is  the  recurring 
problem  of  problems;  it  dwarfs  all  others;  and  for 
a  while  at  any  rate  it  looked  as  if  the  agony  of  the 
war  had  brought  us  a  step  nearer  to  its  solution. 


APPENDIX   A 

THE   SUPREME   COUNCIL  DIFFER  ABOUT 
UPPER    SILESIA 

The  restitution  of  Upper  Silesia  to  Poland  had  been  implied 
in  Mr.  Wilson's  fourteen  points,  January  1918,  and  again  in 
the  statement  issued  by  the  Allies  on  June  3d,  1918.  After  Jan- 
uary 1919,  it  was  definitely  to  be  given  back  to  Poland;  and 
so  it  stood  in  the  treaty  as  delivered  to  the  delegates  of  Ger- 
many on  May  7th — but  it  did  not  stand  so  when  the  treaty 
was  signed,  June  28th.  During  the  interval,  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
re-opened  the  subject.  He  urged  that  Upper  Silesia  should 
decide  by  a  popular  vote  whether  to  remain  German  or  rejoin 
Poland.  Messrs.  Clemenceau  and  Wilson  objected  to  this  change 
of  plan  on  the  ground  that  German  methods  would  prevent  the 
election  from  being  a  fair  one.  The  opinions  and  to  some  ex- 
tent the  characters  of  the  three  men  are  disclosed  in  the  dia- 
logues which  follow,  and  which  are  directly  translated  from 
the  French  stenographic  reports.  These  were  put  into  my 
hands  by  an  eminent  Frenchman  who  was  part  of  it  all,  and 
from  whom  I  had  leave  to  do  with  them  what  I  saw  fit.  They 
were  published  in  The  Saturday  Evening  Post  of  December 
3d,  1921,  with  some  explanatory  comments  which  also  follow. 
They  are  among  the  few  stenographic  records  of  the  Supreme 
Council's  conversations  still  in  existence.  Most  of  these  were 
destroyed  by  order. 

The  question  was  first  brought  up  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George  on 
the  2nd  of  June,  1919.  At  this  meeting  he  asked  that  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine  be  not  occupied,  and  that  the  reparation 
clauses  of  the  treaty  be  revised  to  provide  for  a  lump  sum  to  be 
paid  down  at  once,  reducing  the  German  debt.  Then  he  turned 
to  Upper  Silesia,  and  the  material  parts  of  the  conversations 
follow,  translated  from  the  French  record: 

Lloyd  George:  My  colleagues  all  say  that  the  eastern 
frontier  of  Germany  is  inadmissible  unless  it  is  changed,  and 
if  Germany  refuses  to  sign  [the  treaty]  they  all  think  that 
steps  of  coercion  will  not  seem  justifiable  to  the  country 
[England].  Moreover  they  agree  with  our  experts  in  thinking 
that  as  Upper  Silesia  has  not  been  a  part  of  Poland  for  six  or 
seven  centuries  a  plebiscite  is  indispensable.  If  the  plebiscite 
is  favorable  to  Poland  it  will  be  impossible  for  the  Germans  to 
talk  of  retaliation.  That  is  what  would  have  happened  in  1871 
if  a  plebiscite  favorable  to  Germany  had  been  held  in  Alsace- 

421 


422  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Lorraine.     Besides,  I  am  convinced  that  the  plebiscite  will  be 
favorable  to  Poland. 

Clemenceau:  First,  as  to  Poland,  amends  are  to  be  made 
for  a  historic  crime,  but  also  there  is  a  barrier  between  Ger- 
many and  Russia  to  be  created.  Read  the  interviews  of  Erz- 
berger,  who  wishes  Poland  to  be  made  as  weak  as  possible, 
because  it  separates  Germany  from  Russia.  Mr.  Erzberger 
adds  that  Germany,  once  she  is  in  touch  with  Russia,  can  attack 
France  in  far  better  circumstances  than  in  1914.  Is  that  what 
you  want?  Germany  in  control  of  Russia?  That  means  that 
our  dead  are  slain  for  nothing.  That's  all  I  have  to  remark 
on  this  point  for  the  moment. 

(June  3rd.    Afternoon.) 

Wilson:  A  plebiscite  in  Upper  Silesia  seems  difficult  to  me; 
it  would  be  necessary  first  to  expel  the  German  officials. 

Lloyd  George:     Do  you  mean  the  petty  officials? 

Wilson:  No.  I'm  thinking  of  those  in  charge  of  the  ad- 
ministration. 

Clemenceau:  Don't  forget  that  in  Germany  it's  the  central 
power  that  appoints  the  mayors. 

Lloyd  George:  I  agree  that  the  chief  German  authorities 
ought  to  go  out  of  the  country  before  any  voting. 

Wilson:  Yes,  but  it's  more  than  that.  Fifteen  or  twenty 
big  capitalists  are  the  bosses  in  Upper  Silesia. 

Clemenceau:  Quite  true.  Notably  Henckel  von  Donners- 
marck. 

Wilson:  Unless  the  Germans  are  absent,  a  free  and  honest 
plebiscite,  according  to  my  expert  advisers,  can't  be  looked  for 
in  a  country  so  long  dominated  and  under  constant  fear  of 
reprisals. 

Lloyd  George:  Yet  in  1907,  in  spite  of  this  fear,  the  Poles 
won  the  elections.  My  experts  foresee  a  plebiscite  favorable  to 
Poland.  They  believe  that  such  a  plebiscite  will  preclude  later 
reprisals  by  the  Germans. 

Wilson:  There's  no  trend  of  German  opinion  favorable  to 
Upper  Silesia;  it's  a  capitalistic  affair. 

Lloyd  George:  Yet  the  majority  of  the  German  Govern- 
ment is  socialist,  and  it  is  that  which  is  protesting. 

Wilson  :     Yes,  for  the  benefit  of  the  capitalists. 

Lloyd  George:  I  don't  agree  with  you.  It  is  national 
spirit.  Upper  Silesia  has  been  separated  from  Poland  for 
seven  hundred  years.  I  ask  nothing  unreasonable  in  asking 
that  the  inhabitants  be  allowed  to  vote.  [Let  the  reader  notice 
the  word  "inhabitants,"  used  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George.  Later  on, 
much  turns  upon  this  word.] 

Wilson:     But  I  repeat  that  a  free  vote  will  be  impossible. 

Lloyd  George:  Very  well,  we'll  occupy  the  territory  during 
the  vote. 

Wilson:  Then  they'll  say  that  we  brought  military  pres- 
sure to  bear. 


APPENDIX   A  423 

Clemenceau:  One  way  or  another  the  Germans  will  always 
be  protesting. 

Lloyd  George  :  None  the  less  the  vote  will  have  been  cast. 
Furthermore,  how  are  the  Germans  going  to  intimidate  a  re- 
sisting industrial  community?  We've  gone  through  that  in 
Wales,  and  got  the  better  of  the  big  owners. 

Wilson:     You're  comparing  dissimilar  things. 

Lloyd  George:  But  I  tell  you  that  the  elections  have  gone 
for  the  Poles  in  the  localities  which  concern  us. 

Wilson:  Those  were  local  elections  and  not  a  plebiscite  to 
determine  nationality. 

Clemenceau:  We  haven't  promised  any  plebiscite  in  this 
region. 

Lloyd  George  :  It's  Mr.  Wilson  who  has  proclaimed  on  every 
occasion  the  right  of  self-determination.  We're  providing 
plebiscites  for  the  Saar,  Fiume,  Klagenfurt,  so  why  deny  one  to 
Upper  Silesia? 

Wilson:  I  go  back  on  none  of  my  principles,  but  I  don't 
want  the  Poles  to  come  under  German  pressure. 

Lloyd  George:  You're  employing  the  argument  you  op- 
posed when  Mr.  Orlando  was  using  it  about  Dalmatia. 

Wilson:  That  is  simply  absurd.  What  I'm  after  is  an 
honestly  free  vote.  Now  I  am  advised  that  the  Germans  are 
getting  ready  for  military  action  in  Upper  Silesia. 

Lloyd  George:     All  the  more  reason  for  a  plebiscite. 

Wilson:     Well,  then,  what  are  you  offering  us? 

Lloyd  George:     The  same  procedure  as  in  East  Prussia. 

Wilson:  And  if  the  Germans  decline  to  obey  the  decision 
of  the  League  of  Nations? 

Clemenceau:  You're  going  to  ask  them  to  promise;  they'll 
promise,  and  they'll  not  keep  it.    Is  that  what  you  want? 

Lloyd  George:  I  don't  exclude  military  occupation  of  the 
plebiscite  zone  as  a  hypothesis. 

Wilson:  I  tell  you  that  Germany  will  say  that  pressure 
was  used. 

Lloyd  George:     One  division  would  suffice. 

Wilson:     Suffice  for  them  to  accuse  us  of  pressure. 

Lloyd  George  :  I  want  peace.  I  know  from  a  reliable  source 
that  the  question  of  Upper  Silesia  is  the  most  important  one 
to  the  Germans.  I  prefer  sending  one  division  into  Silesia 
rather  than  armies  to  Berlin. 

Clemenceau:     Who  says  you'll  have  the  choice? 

Lloyd  George:  I  don't  want  to  repeat  the  madness  of 
Napoleon  in  Russia,  and  be  in  Berlin  as  he  was  in  Moscow. 

Clemenceau:     It's  a  bit  late  to  say  all  that. 

Wilson:  The  point  is  to  find  out  if  our  decision  is  equi- 
table. Let  them  show  a  mistake  as  to  race,  and  I  am  ready  to 
correct  it;  but  the  threat  that  Germany  will  refuse  to  sign  is 
of  small  interest  to  me.  If  the  Germans  have  something  valid 
to  say  as  to  Upper  Silesia  I'm  willing  to  go  into  the  question. 


424  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Lloyd  George:  It's  not  at  all  too  late.  The  treaty  of  May 
7th  is  not  an  ultimatum.  We  must  hear  the  Germans.  My 
colleagues  in  the  government  think  so  too.  The  Germans  ask 
nothing  unreasonable  in  asking  that  the  inhabitants  be  con- 
sulted [Notice  again  the  word  "inhabitants"  used  by  Mr.  Lloyd 
George] ;  as  to  the  freedom  of  the  vote,  that  is  our  business : 
if  Germany  rejects  a  plebiscite  favorable  to  Poland  the  British 
Army  will  march  enthusiastically  to  Berlin.  That's  what  I 
require.  I  must  have  the  English  people  with  me  in  case  of 
trouble. 

Wilson:  It  seems  to  me  we  are  further  apart  than  we  were 
at  the  start.  My  point  is  that  a  "no"  from  Germany  isn't  rea- 
son enough  for  changing  our  decisions.  I  am  ready  to  change 
them  in  every  case  where  we  can  be  proved  in  the  wrong. 

Lloyd  George:  There  are  other  considerations.  Why  re- 
fuse secondary  changes  if  they  facilitate  the  signing?  It's  my 
conviction  that  the  plebiscite  will  both  give  Upper  Silesia  to 
Poland  and  facilitate  the  signature. 

Wilson  :  Your  intentions  are  excellent,  but  if  we  send  troops 
we  shall  be  accused  of  exercising  pressure.  I  should  prefer 
taking  other  guaranties  to  insure  the  freedom  of  the  vote,  and 
not  sending  any  troops. 

Clemenceau:  I  have  listened  attentively  to  both  of  you, 
and  here's  my  objection:  you  want  to  avoid  difficulties,  you're 
going  to  create  worse  ones.  A  plebiscite  is  ideal,  but  not  in 
Germany,  where  liberty  has  never  existed.  To  decide  on  a 
plebiscite  and  wash  your  hands  of  it  would  be  very  nice,  but 
it  would  be  a  crime  against  the  Poles.  Occupation  of  the 
plebiscite  zone  remains,  in  which  case  Germany  will  say  that 
pressure  has  been  used — and  do  you  know  what  will  happen? 
In  six  months,  in  a  year,  right  in  the  midst  of  peace  you'll  have 
all  the  bothers  of  war,  and  then  the  situation  will  probably 
be  more  difficult  than  it  is  today.  You  say,  Monsieur  Lloyd 
George,  that  you  don't  wish  to  go  to  Berlin;  no  more  do  I.  If 
we  have  caused  millions  of  soldiers  to  be  killed  it  was  to  save 
our  existence.  You  say  that  you  want  to  learn  the  choice  of 
Upper  Silesia;  I  reply  that  under  German  rule  Upper  Silesia 
can't  make  a  free  choice,  and  that  with  interallied  occupation 
the  Germans  will  claim  that  the  plebiscite  was  queered.  You 
wish  to  quiet  racial  passions;  you're  going  to  inflame  them. 
There  are  times  when  the  simplest  and  wisest  thing  is  to  say 
no.  We  believe  that  we  have  made  a  fair  treaty.  Let's  stick 
to  it.  A  plebiscite  and  an  occupation  mean  quarrels  for  to- 
morrow, battles  perhaps;  in  a  word,  the  very  opposite  of  what 
you  desire. 

Lloyd  George:  But  if  you're  afraid  of  German  resistance 
it  will  come  about  much  more  if  there  is  no  plebiscite,  and  we 
must  recognize  that  from  the  standpoint  of  right  Germany  will 
be  in  a  better  position  than  ourselves. 

Wilson:  We  have  said  on  our  basis  of  the  peace  that  all 
the  indisputably  Polish  provinces  must  come  back  to  Poland. 


APPENDIX   A  425 

Lloyd  George:  But  the  Germans  say  that  this  is  precisely 
not  the  case  in  Silesia. 

Clemenceau:  What?  You  know  perfectly  well  that  Ger- 
man statistics  themselves  show  a  large  majority  of  Upper  Sile- 
sia to  be  Polish. 

Lloyd  George:  But  the  legal  aspect  is  not  the  only  one; 
there's  a  sentiment,  and  I  want  to  know  that. 

Wilson  :  The  racial  question  is  not  doubtful.  As  to  the  rest 
I  am  willing  to  amplify  what  we  have  decided,  but  we  are  not 
obliged  to  do  so  by  the  basis  of  the  peace. 

Lloyd  George:  On  the  racial  basis  one  would  have  to  say 
that  Alsace  is  German. 

Clemenceau:  The  case  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  as  you  know 
well,  is  not  analogous  to  any  other. 

Wilson  :  What  I  maintain  is  that  our  decision  is  not  con- 
trary to  the  fourteen  points. 

Lloyd  George:  Who  of  us  had  thought  of  Upper  Silesia 
before  the  report  of  our  experts  had  brought  it  to  our  atten- 
tion? 

Clemenceau:  You  are  absolutely  wrong.  All  the  Poles 
from  the  start  have  claimed  Upper  Silesia. 

Wilson:  Monsieur  Clemenceau  is  right.  When  I  received 
Dmovski  and  Paderewski  in  Washington  I  questioned  them  a 
long  while,  map  in  hand.  Their  claims  were  excessive,  but  we 
all  agreed  upon  the  formula  "to  give  Poland  all  regions  in- 
habited by  Poles." 

Lloyd  George:  I  tell  you  again  that  we  can  never  have 
thought  of  giving  to  Poland  a  province  which  has  not  been 
Polish  for  eight  hundred  years. 

Clemenceau:  And  I  tell  you  again  that  the  claim  as  to 
Upper  Silesia  has  always  been  formulated  by  Poland  and  recog- 
nized as  just  by  us. 

Wilson  :  We  must  finish.  We  might  consent  to  a  plebiscite 
under  the  control  of  an  interallied  commission.  We  would 
declare  the  plebiscite  to  be  void  if  the  commission  reported  to 
us  that  pressure  had  been  exercised. 

Lloyd  George:  I  fancy  that  Germany  would  accept  an 
American  occupation. 

Clemenceau:  Well,  I  promise  you  that  no  matter  who  the 
occupiers  may  be,  Germany  will  protest  just  the  same. 

Wilson:  Germany  doesn't  love  the  United  States  any  better 
than  she  loves  the  other  allies.  What  is  your  decision?  Do 
you  want  a  plebiscite  and  do  you  wish  an  interallied  commission 
to  define  how  it  shall  be  held? 

Lloyd  George:  The  German  troops  must  evacuate  Upper 
Silesia. 

Wilson:  Quite  so,  and  the  interallied  commission  must  even 
be  able  to  summon  allied  troops. 

Clemenceau:     But  what  force  do  you  think  necessary? 

Lloyd  George:     One  division. 

Clemenceau:    I'm  not  convinced. 


426  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Lloyd  George:  If  the  Germans  refuse  to  sign  I  must  be 
able  to  prove  to  my  cabinet  and  to  the  people  that  the  fault  is 
not  ours. 

Then  they  decided  that  the  experts  draw  up  a  scheme;  and 
on  the  morning  of  June  5th  they  had  in  Mr.  Paderewski,  whom 
Mr.  Wilson  addressed  as  follows : 

Wilson:  They  tell  us  that  the  most  serious  question  is 
Upper  Silesia.  Our  experts  have  prepared  a  note,  which  has 
been  communicated  to  us.  But  before  deciding  we  want  your 
opinion.  The  material  change  will  be  the  provision  for  a 
plebiscite.  The  population  is  Polish  by  a  large  majority,  as  we 
know,  but  some  think  that  a  plebiscite,  held  of  course  after  the 
departure  of  the  German  troops,  will  give  more  strength  to  our 
decisions. 

Paderewski:  The  actual  text  of  the  treaty  is  justice  itself. 
In  Silesia  there  are  two  districts  where  Poland  has  an  un- 
doubted majority,  and  one  where  the  majority  in  German.  The 
part  to  the  west,  which  is  agricultural,  is  under  the  influence 
of  the  Catholic  clergy,  very  dangerous  from  our  point  of  view; 
it  influences  the  opinion  of  the  peasants.  To  the  east  the  popu- 
lation is  more  thoughtful  and  freer,  but  if  only  the  east  be- 
comes Polish,  the  whole  industrial  region  will  be  close  to  the 
frontier. 

Lloyd  George:     Which  zone  is  the  more  densely  populated? 

Paderewski  :  The  east.  In  the  mining  region  there  are  900,- 
000  Poles,  400,000  Germans.  In  the  farming  region  there  are 
600,000  inhabitants;  it  is  an  indisputably  Polish  country. 

Wilson:  The  Germans  themselves  recognize  that  the  popu- 
lation is  Polish. 

Paderewski:     Yet,  nevertheless,  they  claim  Upper  Silesia. 

Lloyd  George:  If  we  were  to  speak  of  Silesia  as  a  whole, 
and  not  merely  of  Upper  Silesia,  in  its  entirety  it  is  mainly 
German. 

Paderewski:  Yes,  many  people  were  speaking  Polish  at 
Breslau  when  I  was  there.  [He  means  by  this  that  in  a  German 
city  much  Polish  was  spoken  just  as  much  Yiddish  is  spoken 
in  New  York,  and  that  these  are  not  the  facts  which  decide  to 
what  country  a  city  belongs.] 

Clemenceau:  But  as  to  what  concerns  Upper  Silesia,  do 
you  agree  to  a  plebiscite  after  the  evacuation  of  the  territory 
by  German  troops?     That's  what  we  want  to  know  from  you. 

Paderewski:  Such  a  change  in  the  treaty  would  oblige  me 
to  resign,  for  the  people  to  whom  the  text  of  June  7th  [a  mis- 
take for  May  7th  ]  promised  Upper  Silesia  would  lose  their 
confidence. 

Lloyd  George:  We  promised  nothing  at  all,  we  wrote  the 
scheme  of  a  treaty,  we  didn't  give  it  the  form  of  an  ultimatum. 
We  reserved  our  liberty  to  examine  the  reply  of  the  Germans, 
and  consequently  we  have  the  right  to  make  concessions  if  they 
are  reasonable.  What?  Yesterday  Poland  was  divided  in 
three  pieces,  your  fellow-countrymen  were  fighting  separately 


APPENDIX   A  427 

against  each  other,  and  all  were  fighting  together  against  the 
independence  of  their  own  country.  Today  you  are  sure  of  a 
resurrected  Poland  which  will  have  20,000,000  inhabitants; 
you're  demanding  in  addition,  for  example,  a  population  in  Gali- 
cia  which  is  not  Polish.  You're  demanding  all  this  from  us ;  you, 
whose  liberty  has  been  won  by  the  death  of  1,500,000  French- 
men, 800,000  Englishmen,  and  500,000  Italians.  It's  our  blood 
that  has  paid  for  your  independence.  If  you  kick  against  our 
decisions  we  shall  have  been  mistaken  in  you. 

Paderewski:  I  confined  myself  to  stating  that  I  could  not 
remain  in  office. 

Lloyd  George:  We  have  given  liberty  to  Poland,  Bohemia, 
Jugo-Slavia;  and  those  are  the  countries  that  kick  against 
the  plebiscite.  They  are  much  more  imperialistic  than  the  great 
nations  themselves. 

Paderewski:  I  cannot  admit  what  you  say;  you  are  merely 
reproducing  newspaper  talk. 

Lloyd  George:  I  say  that  you  want  to  annex  people  against 
their  will. 

Paderewski:  Not  in  the  slightest  degree.  We  defend  our 
countrymen  when  they  are  attacked. 

Clemenceau  :  I  want  to  come  back  to  the  question  of  the 
plebiscite.  If  it  is  held  after  some  postponement  and  until 
that  time  American  troops  occupy  the  country,  do  you  think 
the  vote  will  be  free  and  favorable  to  Poland? 

Paderewski:  Yes,  undoubtedly  in  the  eastern  part.  As  for 
the  western  part,  the  threefold  influence  of  the  freeholders,  the 
officials,  and  the  clericals  will  make  the  outcome  uncertain. 
Furthermore  the  object  of  the  Germans  is  to  provoke  a  dis- 
turbance in  order  to  have  to  repress  it.  They  have  350,000 
men  on  the  Polish  frontier. 

The  conversation  about  Poland  was  resumed  on  the  morning 
of  June  9th. 

Lloyd  George:  The  experts  who  have  been  at  work  over 
the  plebiscite  do  not  agree  as  to  the  interval  between  the  signing 
of  the  treaty  and  the  plebiscite.  Now  this  interval  bears  upon 
the  system  to  be  established.  We  alone  are  able  to  solve  this 
question.  Do  not  forget  that  three  of  the  experts  are  hostile 
in  principle  to  the  plebiscite. 

Wilson:  It  will  be  enough  to  ask  them  to  explain  the  two 
systems. 

Lloyd  George:  That's  it.  Moreover,  some  proposals  are  not 
acceptable,  such  as  the  expulsion  of  the  entire  clergy.  The  com- 
mission who  will  be  on  the  ground  must  be  exempt  from  its 
decisions.  \ 

Clemenceau:  I  recognize  that  it  may  be  difficult  to  expel 
the  entire  clergy,  and  yet  you  cannot  overlook  the  pro-German 
influence  that  it  will  exert. 

Lloyd  George:  As  in  Ireland;  and  in  spite  of  that  we  do  not 
expel  the  Irish  clergy.  The  plebiscite  will  deprive  the  Germans 


428  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

of  all  pretext  for  fighting.  With  concessions  as  to  the  repara- 
tions in  addition,  the  Germans  will  sign. 

On  the  afternoon  of  June  11th  they  returned  to  the  question. 

Clemenceau:  Do  you  wish  to  hear  the  commission  on  Polish 
affairs? 

Lloyd  George:  That  commission  is  very  biased  regarding 
Poland;  I  don't  want  to  debate  with  it. 

Clemenceau:  We'll  debate  only  with  each  other,  but  we 
must  first  hear  the  commission,  question  it  and  listen  to  it.  I 
desire  to  repeat  once  again  that  I  am  against  a  plebiscite 
in  Upper  Silesia.  Since  you  all  agree  to  the  principle  I'll  be 
with  you  in  a  spirit  of  conciliation,  but  I  can't  forget  that 
wherever  the  population  has  elected  Polish  deputies  the  pleb- 
iscite is  useless.  [He  means  that  Polish  deputies  to  the  Reich- 
stag count  for  nothing.] 

Wilson:  We  can  examine  its  limitations.  I  should  add  that 
my  colleague,  Mr.  White,  has  also  brought  me  reports  of  the 
pro-German  influence  of  the  Polish  clericals. 

Lloyd  George:  I'll  bet  those  reports  come  from  Polish 
sources.  Look  what  the  Poles  are  saying  about  the  Jews.  They 
claim  to  be  giving  them  the  best  treatment  in  the  world,  and 
we  all  know  it's  not  true.  A  plebiscite  is  a  just  thing.  With- 
out a  plebiscite  our  consciences  would  not  be  at  ease  if  British 
troops  had  to  be  sent  to  get  themselves  killed  in  Upper  Silesia. 
A  plebiscite  put  off  for  several  months  or  an  interallied  occu- 
pation will  give  us  free  elections. 

Wilson  :  You're  very  biased  yourself.  My  information 
comes  from  Americans  on  the  spot.  You  appear  to  have  for- 
gotten what  the  Germans  can  do  in  the  way  of  propaganda  and 
pressure.  I  know  what  they  did  in  America.  What  will  they 
not  do  in  Silesia,  where  they  are  politically  and  economically 
sovereign?  When  it  comes  to  the  Germans  I  am  against  them 
and  for  Poland. 

Clemenceau:     That's  truth. 

Lloyd  George:  I  tell  you  again  that  if  we  have  to  fight 
about  the  east  frontier  of  Germany  our  soldiers  won't  fight  if 
Germany  can  prove  that  the  plebiscite  was  rejected  in  spite 
of  Great  Britain's  opinion. 

Wilson:  We've  been  making  no  sacrifice  of  our  own  inter- 
ests; don't  let  us  consent  to  them  at  the  expense  of  a  little 
country.  [Mr.  Wilson  meant  by  this  that  after  a  lively  discus- 
sion and  upon  the  unbreakable  opposition  of  Mr.  Clemenceau 
the  clauses  relating  to  the  occupation  of  the  left  bank  of  the 
Rhine  and  the  reparations  had  been  retained  without  change. 1 

Lloyd  George:  You  know  perfectly  well  that  my  sole  object 
was  not  to  give  Poland  territory  that  was  not  Polish.  Were 
we  to  do  that  we  could  not  fight  to  assure  such  territory  to  it. 

Wilson:  I'm  sorry  for  the  excitement  into  which  I've 
thrown  you.  It's  also  quite  certain  that  you've  never  changed 
your  opinion  about  this. 


APPENDIX   A  429 

Lloyd  George:  I  want  to  avoid  conflict.  The  Germans  in 
Upper  Silesia  consider  the  Poles  an  inferior  population,  for 
whom  they  entertain  contempt;  and  to  put  Germans  under 
Polish  rule  would  be  to  provoke  trouble. 

Clemenceau:  You'll  have  trouble,  never  _  doubt  it,  of  all 
sorts,  now  or  later,  with  or  without  a  plebiscite. 

Lloyd  George:     I  hold  an  utterly  opposite  opinion. 

Clemenceau:  The  future  will  settle  it,  but  I  beg  you  not  to 
forget  what  I'm  saying  today. 

Wilson  :  The  first  thing  to  do,  according  to  the  experts,  is 
to  cause  the  withdrawal  of  German  troops.  Will  British  soldiers 
fight  to  make  the  plebiscite  respected? 

Lloyd  George:  Yes,  because  it's  a  just  principle;  and  what 
I'd  like  to  know  is,  if  the  French  Army  would  fight  for  Upper 
Silesia  to  become  Polish  without  a  plebiscite? 

Clemenceau:  I  reply  yes,  because  the  question  is  not  as 
you  put  it;  here's  the  one  question:  to  know  if  the  Germans 
will  sign  or  not  sign  the  treaty. 

Wilson:  The  American  soldiers  will  always  fight  against 
the  Germans. 

Lloyd  George:  I'm  not  speaking  for  your  soldiers;  I'm 
speaking  for  mine.  You  know  how  Lord  Northcliffe  is  attack- 
ing me  in  his  newspapers,  and  yet  he  is  for  the  plebiscite  in 
Upper  Silesia. 

[The  experts  are  brought  in — Mr.  Jules  Cambon,  General  Le 
Rond,  Mr.  Morley,  and  Mr.  Lord.] 

Wilson:  In  what  do  the  experts  agree  and  in  what  do  they 
disagree? 

Le  Rond:  We  agree  upon  the  territorial  question,  the  coal 
question,  and  the  financial  clauses.  We  disagree  upon  the  ques- 
tion of  the  plebiscite  in  Upper  Silesia.  President  Wilson  two 
days  ago  ordered  us  in  the  name  of  the  Four  to  present  two 
schemes — one  for  a  plebiscite  shortly,  the  other  for  a  postponed 
plebiscite.  In  Upper  Silesia  the  Poles  are  not  their  own 
masters.  The  big  freeholders  are  lords  of  the  soil;  they  are 
really  feudal  with  more  power  than  those  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  because  they  own  not  only  the  ground  but  what  is  be- 
neath, and  the  manufactories  and  the  capital. 

Clemenceau:  Chiefly  the  bishop  of  Breslau,  who  is  one  of 
those  big  freeholders. 

Le  Rond:  I'll  speak  presently  of  him.  The  big  freeholders 
hold  the  country  in  a  net,  notably  the  clergy.  The  bishop  of 
Breslau  is  particularly  powerful.  Since  the  armistice  the  Polish 
priests  have  been  sent  elsewhere.  The  Germans  suppress  the 
Polish  newspapers  and  it's  being  said  that  if  Silesia  becomes 
Polish  the  money  in  the  savings  banks  will  disappear.  Accord- 
ing to  the  general  opinion  of  the  experts,  serious  precautions 
should  be  taken.  The  majority  of  the  experts  consider  that  a 
pretty  long  postponement  is  required;  between  one  and  two 
years. 

Lloyd  George:     I  accept. 


430  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

Le  Rond:  Out  of  eight  electoral  districts  in  Upper  Silesia, 
five  were  represented  in  the  Reichstag  by  Poles. 

Clemenceau:     Did  these  Poles  claim  they  were  independent? 

Le  Rond:     They  couldn't  under  the  German  system. 

Wilson:     There  was  a  strong  Polish  party  in  Upper  Silesia? 

Le   Rond:     Yes. 

Lloyd  George:  I  fancy  it's  useless  to  bring  up  the  question 
of  an  immediate  plebiscite. 

Le  Rond:  I'll  speak  of  the  preparation  for  a  plebiscite.  If 
it  doesn't  take  place  until  after  a  fairly  long  wait  you  must 
give  wider  powers  to  your  commission. 

Lloyd  George:     The  question  is  settled  for  me. 

Le  Rond:  Who  will  settle  the  date — the  Powers  or  the 
League  of  Nations? 

Lloyd  George:     I'll  accept  either  method. 

Wilson  :  Can  you  inform  us  as  to  the  Polish  part  of  Upper 
Silesia? 

Lord:  There  are  two  parties,  one  socialist,  one  not,  but 
both  are  working  for  union  with  Poland. 

Lloyd  George:  But  is  it  not  the  same  thing  as  in  Ireland 
or  in  Wales — attachment  to  the  nationality,  but  never  until 
recently,  even  in  Ireland,  a  serious  idea  of  separation? 

Lord:  Separation  was  not  in  the  program,  probably  be- 
cause it  wasn't  supposed  possible  in  the  condition  of  Europe. 

Le  Rond:  Since  the  war  the  movement  in  favor  of  union 
with  Poland  has  been  very  active  in  the  whole  of  Upper  Silesia. 

Lloyd  George:  I  don't  contest  that,  but  what  I  don't  know 
is  the  strength  of  Polish  sentiment. 

[The  experts  retire.] 

Wilson:  I  consider  that  we  must  decide  for  a  plebiscite  a 
year  off  at  least,  two  years  off  at  the  latest.  Mr.  Lord  has  it 
from  an  American  on  the  spot  that  all  classes  of  the  population 
want  a  plebiscite.  Now  Mr.  Lord  himself  is  against  a  plebi- 
scite. 

Clemenceau:  I've  nothing  to  add  to  what  I  have  said.  I 
persist  in  thinking  the  plebiscite  a  mistake.  Since  I'm  alone 
in  this,  I  must  bow;  none  the  less  I  continue  to  believe  that  we 
are  headed  for  grave  difficulties  in  Upper  Silesia  and  that  a 
prompt  settlement  would  have  been  better. 

Wilson:  Here  is  the  scheme  for  defining  the  powers  of  the 
commission   on   the   plebiscite. 

[The  scheme  is  adopted.] 

Clemenceau:     Is  occupation  provided  for? 

Wilson  :     Yes. 

Clemenceau:  Is  the  evacuation  of  the  German  troops  stip- 
ulated? 

Wilson  :     Yes. 

Clemenceau:     What  interval  shall  we  set  for  the  plebiscite? 

Lloyd  George:  The  committee  will  make  a  proposal  at  the 
end  of  the  year. 

Clemenceau:     Who  are  the  troops  of  occupation? 


APPENDIX   A  431 

Lloyd  George:     I  think  we'll  all  have  to  participate.     I'd 
still  prefer  that  it  was  the  Americans. 
Wilson:     I'll  consult  my  military  authorities. 
Clemenceau:     Who'll  pay  the  expenses  of  the  occupation? 
Orlando:     The  country  who'll  get  Upper  Silesia. 

They  resumed  on  the  morning  of  June  14th. 

Wilson  :  We  have  decided  to  have  recourse  to  the  plebiscite 
to  deprive  Germany  of  the  slightest  pretext  for  irredentist 
action  in  the  future.  Besides,  the  Germans  realize  that  the  pop- 
ulation is  Polish  in  majority  but  they  deny  its  wish  to  be  joined 
to  Poland.  Mr.  Paderewski  has  marked  out  two  zones — the 
mining  region  to  the  east,  where  the  result  of  the  plebiscite 
seems  to  him  not  doubtful,  and  the  farming  region  to  the  west, 
where  the  result  is  doubtful.  This  must  be  taken  into  consid- 
eration.    Accordingly  we  have  decided: 

1.  That  the  plebiscite  shall  be  held  by  commune  [township, 
parish] . 

2.  That  it  shall  be  put  off  for  several  months  in  order  that 
German  pressure  may  be  eliminated. 

3.  That  the  German  troops  shall  immediately  evacuate 
Upper  Silesia. 

Paderewski:  I  can't  pretend  that  this  is  not  a  cruel  blow, 
for  we  had  been  promised  Upper  Silesia.  If  the  plebiscite  turned 
out  unfavorable  to  us  it  would  be  the  peasants,  the  working- 
men,  who  would  suffer.  As  to  the  period  of  waiting  which  you 
have  provided,  it  will  create  an  unwelcome  tension.  The  plebi- 
scite should  not  be  put  off  longer  than  six  months  at  the  most. 
Our  delegation  accepts  your  decision  with  the  respect  it  hag 
for  you,  but  not  without  profound  regret. 

Wilson:  Your  words  move  me  deeply;  I've  gone  through 
many  doubts  and  scruples  of  conscience. 

Clemenceau:     You  know  that  my  opinion  has  never  changed. 

Lloyd  George:  I  was  myself  much  moved  by  the  state- 
ments of  Mr.  Paderewski.  We  have  reflected  a  long  while,  but 
I  am  certain  that  Poland  has  nothing  to  fear  in  the  mining 
region  from  the  plebiscite. 

Wilson:  An  American  who  went  there  tells  me  that  union 
with  Poland  is  desired  by  everybody  and  that  the  result  will  be 
favorable. 

Dmovski:  I  am  convinced  that  taken  altogether  the  plebi- 
scite will  give  good  results.  I  know  the  German  argument  well. 
They  declare  that  the  population  does  not  want  to  be  Polish. 
I  realize  that  fifty  years  ago  it  was  no  longer  Polish  save  in 
speech,  but  during  the  past  half  century  there  has  been  a  great 
awakening.  This  might  now  create  difficulties  if  districts  which 
in  1919  might  hesitate  to  vote  for  Poland  should  rise  up  against 
German  rule  later.    What  would  the  Great  Powers  do? 

Wilson:  To  deal  with  such  questions  is  one  of  the  essential 
offices  of  the  League  of  Nations. 


432  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 


Lloyd  George:  Quite  so;  we  can't  settle  everything  at  once, 
but  there'll  be  permanent  machinery  for  adjustment. 

Dmovski:  What  have  you  decided  about  the  evacuation  of 
Upper  Silesia  by  German  troops? 

Wilson  :     It  will  take  place  at  once  after  the  signature. 

Dmovski:  What  have  you  decided  about  the  German 
officials? 

Wilson:     The  commission  has  full  power  to  drive  them  out. 

Dmovski:  The  commission  in  its  work  would  have  to  be 
aided  equally  by  the  German  and  the  Polish  element. 

Wilson  :     The  commission  will  have  discretionary  powers. 

[Mr.  Paderewski  and  Mr.  Dmovski  retire.] 

Lloyd  George:  All  the  partisans  of  Poland  asked  that  the 
plebiscite  be  put  off,  and  here's  the  Polish  delegation  asking 
that  it  take  place  as  soon  as  possible. 

Wilson:  I  should  have  supposed  that  an  interval  of  from 
one  to  two  years  was  a  guaranty  for  Poland. 

Clemenceau:  Possibly;  but  Mr.  Paderewski  tells  you  that 
the  intervening  period  runs  the  danger  of  driving  everybody 
crazy. 

Wilson:  We  must  take  what  he  said  into  consideration  and 
adopt  a  plan  that  allows  at  need  an  abridgment  of  the  interval 
before  the  plebiscite.  I  suggest  we  say  from  six  to  eighteen 
months.    [Adopted.] 

So  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  his  way,  and  a  plebiscite  in  Upper 
Silesia  was  provided  for,  accordingly,  by  Article  88  of  the 
Treaty  of  Versailles,  as  follows: 

Article  88:  "In  the  portion  of  Upper  Silesia  included  within 
the  boundaries  described  below,  the  inhabitants  will  be  called 
upon  to  indicate  by  a  vote  whether  they  wish  to  be  attached  to 
Germany  or  to  Poland.  .  .  .  Germany  hereby  renounces  in 
favor  of  Poland  all  rights  and  title  over  the  portion  of  Upper 
Silesia  lying  beyond  the  frontier  line  fixed  by  the  Principal 
Allied  and  Associated  Powers  as  the  result  of  the  plebiscite." 

Section  4  of  the  annex  to  this  article  specifies  and  limits  very 
precisely  who  the  qualified  voters  are  to  be. 

a.  All  persons  of  either  sex  who  have  completed  their  20th 

year. 

b.  Who  were  born  in  Upper  Silesia  or  were  domiciled  there 

by  January  1st,  1919. 

c.  Or  who  had  lost  their  domicile  by  being  expelled  by  the 

German   authorities. 

Clause  C  enlarges  the  definition  of  "inhabitants"  by  including 
the  banished  inhabitants;  they  can  come  back;  but  not  Germans 
born  there  and  emigrated  voluntarily.  To  have  meant  that  all 
persons  born  in  Upper  Silesia  should  vote  after  completing  their 
20th  year,  and  then  to  add  an  annex  describing  which  persons 
should  vote  there  would  have  been  a  manifest  absurdity. 

One  would  suppose  this  pretty  clear;  but  the  Germans  who 
had  emigrated  from  Schleswig  were  allowed  to  return  and  vote 


APPENDIX   A  433 

in  violation  of  provisions  virtually  similar  to  these.  The  same 
provisions,  virtually,  applied  to  Allenstein  and  Marienwerder  in 
East  Prussia  (see  Article  95),  and  the  treaty  was  violated  in 
the  same  way.  When  it  came  to  Upper  Silesia  the  precedent 
thus  established  was  claimed  by  Germany  and  conceded  by 
the  Allies.  Germany  asserted  that  Section  4  of  the  Annex 
destroyed  the  meaning  of  "inhabitants"  in  Article  88. 

This  grows  more  inconceivable  when  you  find,  in  Section  5, 
that  "regard  will  be  paid  to  the  wishes  of  the  inhabitants  as 
shown  by  the  vote" — nothing  said  about  emigrated  Germans; 
that  the  report  of  the  commission  computes  the  number  of  voters 
as  1,900,000 — which  is  the  number  of  inhabitants  of  Upper 
Silesia  in  1910,  according  to  the  Prussian  census — no  question 
of  emigrants  here;  and  that  the  German  note  of  May  1919  con- 
fines itself  to  requesting  that  the  right  to  vote  be  granted  to 
"any  German  subject  aged  20  years  complete  and  living  in  the 
plebiscite  territory  at  least  a  year  before  the  conclusion  of  the 
peace."  No  question  of  emigrants  here.  This  request,  as  the 
reader  will  notice,  was  granted  by  clause  b  of  the  annex,  fixing 
January  1st,  1919.     What  followed  is  more  inconceivable  still. 

In  the  summer  of  1920,  the  Allies  allowed  that  emigrated 
Germans  should  vote  in  Upper  Silesia.  In  the  autumn,  Mon- 
sieur G.  Leygues  obtained  the  concession  that  at  least  these 
Germans  should  not  vote  on  the  same  day  as  the  inhabitants. 
In  January  1921,  at  the  Paris  conference,  this  concession  was 
renounced  by  France.  In  March  the  plebiscite  took  place,  and 
Germans  to  the  number  of  190,000  entered  and  intimidated  the 
voters.  This  election  failed  utterly  in  its  object,  which  was  to 
register  the  true  aspirations  of  the  inhabitants.  From  March 
until  August — again  in  violation  of  Article  88,  which  sets  one 
month  after  the  vote  as  the  term  in  which  frontiers  and  admin- 
istration are  to  be  settled — nothing  is  settled ;  then  the  Supreme 
Council  passed  the  mess  it  had  made  to  the  League  of  Nations. 
Then  the  League  of  Nations  by  its  decision  awarded  Poland 
more  than  was,  according  to  German  ideas,  satisfactory. 

At  this  the  German  Cabinet  resigned  office  and  took  it  again 
the  next  day,  like  something  in  a  comic  opera,  while  the  Berlin 
papers  were  remarking,  "We  must  help  accelerate  the  Polish 
process  of  decay,"  and  that  Germany  was  no  longer  bound  by 
the  Peace  Treaty  because  "it  has  been  grossly  violated  again!" 
Soon  the  League  of  Nations  confessed  itself  at  a  loss,  not  very 
unnaturally.  What  could  it  do?  It  had  been  founded  upon  a 
theory  of  human  nature  rather  than  on  a  condition,  and  con- 
sequently rested  on  sand,  which  we  must  hope  may  slowly 
change  to  rock.  Meanwhile,  we  usually  supply  sailboats  today 
with^  auxiliary  power.  The  suggestion  of  power,  during  all  this 
passing  back  and  forth  of  resnonsibility,  came  from  quite 
another  source.  General  Ludendorff,  in  a  speech  he  made  at 
Koenigsberg.  indicated  his  way  of  settling  the  question  of 
Upner  Silesia. 

"I  entertain   no  doubt,"  he   said,  "that  the   destiny  of  our 


434  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

country  will  be  decided  sooner  or  later  by  a  battle  for  tbat  land 
to  our  east.  When  the  hour  comes  remember  what  won  us  our 
victory  at  Tannenberg — the  will  of  our  leaders,  our  faith  in 
those  leaders,  our  discipline  and  courage  in  the  face  of  death. 
The  greater  our  country's  need  the  more  closely  shall  we  rally 
round  the  black,  white,  and  red  flag  of  Prussia.  We  are  proud 
of  our  beloved  Prussia;  we  are,  and  we  wish  to  be,  Prussians." 

Great  applause  followed  these  words,  the  audience  gave  the 
general  an  ovation.  A  counter  demonstration  by  socialists  was 
promptly  suppressed. 

In  May  1922,  Poland  and  Germany  agreed  to  abide  for  fifteen 
years  by  the  decision  of  the  League  of  Nations.  Will  this  be 
another  scrap  of  paper? 

The  Treaty  of  Versailles  has  had  but  few  readers.  During 
our  presidential  campaign  in  1920  many  friends  of  the  League 
of  Nations  reproached  me  for  being  a  Republican.  Not  one  of 
these  friends  had  read  the  treaty;  most  of  them  had  never  even 
seen  the  outside  of  it.  Yet,  perfectly  ignorant  of  its  many 
provisions,  unwise  and  hastily  prepared,  they  wished  it  ratified. 
I  hope  that  I  have  made  clear  the  story  of  Upper  Silesia. 
First,  early  in  1919,  it  is  to  be  given  outright  to  Poland;  next, 
a  string  is  tied  to  this  gift  by  a  plebiscite,  at  which  shall 
vote  only  native-born  and  residents  naturalized  before  January 
1st,  1919,  and  residents  exiled  by  Germany;  next,  contrary  to 
this  signed  agreement,  German  emigrants  are  to  vote;  next, 
these  are  to  vote  on  a  different  day  from  the  inhabitants;  next, 
they  are  to  vote  on  the  same  day;  finally,  190,000  of  them  enter 
and  vote  on  the  same  day,  and  the  election  is  an  intimidation  and 
not  free,  precisely  as  Clemenceau  told  Lloyd  George  it  would 
be  and  Lloyd  George  told  Clemenceau  he  was  sure  it  wouldn't. 

Would  not  a  sticking  to  the  treaty  have  been  simpler?  This 
is  not  a  case  of  posterity  interpreting  the  vague  language  of  a 
document  it  did  not  write;  it  is  the  departure  by  the  stipulators 
from  their  own  specific  stipulations.  Many  a  set  of  politicians 
have  gone  back  on  a  treaty  which  their  predecessors  signed; 
but  never  until  now  have  we  seen  a  set  of  politicians  going  back 
within  two  years  on  what  they  have  signed  themselves;  and 
this  irresponsible  levity  about  a  solemn  agreement  not  only 
belittles  the  Allies  and  encourages  Germany  in  her  plan  of 
revenge  but  it  insults  and  impairs  the  sense  of  honor  of  the 
entire  civilized  world. 


APPENDIX   B 

FOCH   SPEAKS    HIS  MIND 

On  November  7th,  1920,  eighteen  months  to  a  day  after  the 
Treaty  of  Versailles  was  delivered  to  the  Germans,  Marshal 
Foch  was  on  his  way  to  Amiens  to  decorate  the  graves  of  the 
Australians  who  had  defended  the  city  for  three  years,  and 
saved  it  in  1918,  and  had  left  fifty  thousand  dead  on  French  soil. 

Perhaps  it  was  because  he  was  in  the  same  private  car  in 
which  the  Germans  had  signed  the  Armistice  almost  exactly 
two  years  before,  that  his  companion,  M.  Jules  Sauerwein,  a 
writer  for  Le  Matin,  found  him  in  a  mood,  at  first  slightly  re- 
luctant but  finally  almost  without  reserve,  to  talk  about  the 
Armistice.  He  broke  his  silence  about  this  and  also  about  two 
other  matters  of  historic  interest,  namely,  the  circumstances  in 
which  he  was  made  commander-in-chief  of  the  allied  armies 
after  the  disaster  to  the  5th  British  army  in  the  great  spring 
drive  of  1918,  and  the  tardiness  as  well  as  the  character  of  the 
peace  treaty. 

No  observer  can  look  at  the  face  of  Foch,  especially  at  his 
eyes,  without  perceiving  that  his  is  a  nature  of  perfect  loyalty 
and  also  that  whatever  animation  may  pass  over  the  surface, 
he  is  deeply  and  finally  sad.  This  comes  not  alone  from  the 
personal  bereavement  that  he  suffered  in  the  war ;  it  is  due  also, 
and  possibly  even  more,  to  the  undoing  of  his  work  by  the 
politicians,  which  he  foresaw  but  which  he  was  powerless  to 
prevent. 

When  the  world  read  his  reasons  for  granting  an  armistice 
at  the  time  they  were  published — the  sparing  of  human  life, 
since  all  was  gained  without  further  bloodshed — they  seemed 
adequate.  Very  few  could  have  known  then  that  the  Armistice 
was  forced  upon  him  against  his  conviction,  and  that  loyalty 
alone  prompted  him  not  only  to  assent  openly  but  also  openly 
to  support  the  step  taken.  What  he  would  have  done  had  he 
known  that  no  peace  would  be  signed  until  the  following  June, 
no  one  can  be  sure,  probably  not  even  he. 

To  lay  the  calamity  of  the  Armistice  wholly  at  Mr.  Wilson's 
door  is  probably  not  any  more  correct  than  to  leave  out  his  in- 
fluence altogether.  Several  causes  would  seem  to  have  com- 
bined, and  were  alleged  then,  and  later.  It  was  said  that  the 
British  Army,  after  its  tremendous  and  exhausting  pursuit, 
could   have   gone   no   further   then;    that   all   the   armies   had 

435 


436  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

marched  so  far  in  advance  of  their  bases  of  supply  as  to  make 
further  progress  at  that  time,  or  until  the  spring,  impossible; 
that  every  bridge  and  other  link  of  communication  had  been 
destroyed  by  the  retreating  Germans,  so  that  necessary  repairs 
both  in  front  and  in  the  rear  would  have  delayed  an  invasion 
of  Germany  until  spring,  giving  Germany  time  to  entrench 
herself  formidably;  and,  finally,  that  Mr.  Wilson,  whose  14 
points  had  helped  to  allay  in  January  a  growing  socialistic 
opposition  to  carrying  on  the  war  in  1918,  had  by  his  notes 
to  Max  of  Baden  in  October  again  revived  this  opposition  to 
an  extent  so  widespread  that  it  had  to  be  reckoned  with.  These 
reasons,  if  true,  must  have  seemed  strong  in  November  1918. 
A  complete  answer  to  them,  however,  is  to  be  found  in  the  plan 
for  the  Lorraine  offensive  to  have  been  launched  on  November 
14th.  In  the  light  of  that,  any  threat  to  withdraw  the  American 
troops  would  have  been  by  itself  enough  to  have  forced  the 
Armistice;  and  if  such  a  threat  was  in  fact  made,  Mr.  Wilson's 
figure  will  stand  almost  as  prominent  in  history  as  that  of  the 
Kaiser. 

Much  controversy  surrounds  the  delay  in  uniting  all  the 
armies  under  the  command  of  Foch  after  this  had  been  urged 
in  high  quarters.  The  conversation  between  him  and  Sauerwein 
throws  some  light  upon  this,  but  not  enough.  Foch  begins  by 
expressing  weariness  of  repeating  the  story  of  the  Armistice, 
but  as  he  warms  to  it,  occasionally  dropping  into  colloquialisms 
for  which  it  is  not  easy  to  find  English  equivalents,  his  opinion 
of  the  slump  from  victory  to  failure  is  revealed,  as  well  as  his 
unhappiness. 

"What  is  an  armistice?  It  is  a  suspension  of  arms,  a  cessa- 
tion of  hostilities,  which  has  for  its  object  the  discussion  of 
peace  by  putting  the  governments  which  have  consented  to  it  in 
a  situation  such  that  they  can  impose  the  peace  on  which  they 
have  decided. 

"Has  the  Armistice  which  I  signed  on  the  11th  of  November, 
1918,  fulfilled  its  object? 

"Yes,  since  on  the  28th  of  June,  after  seven  months  of  nego- 
tiations, Germany  accepted  all  the  conditions  of  the  Allies.  I  had 
said  to  M.  Clemenceau,  the  President  of  the  Council,  'Here  is  my 
Armistice:  you  can  make  any  peace  you  please,  I  am  in  a  posi- 
tion to  enforce  it.'  If  the  peace  has  not  been  good,  is  it  my 
fault?    I  did  my  work;  it  was  for  the  politicians  to  do  theirs. 

"I  had  been  thinking  thf>  neace  over  for  a  l°ng  while.  P>y 
Sentember  1918  I  was  writing  to  M.  Clemenceau.  I  said  to 
him:  'The  end  of  the  war  approaches.  Send  me  a  member  of 
our  foreign  ministry  to  inform  me  of  the  conditions  of  peace 
which  you  are  preparing  in  order  that  our  armies  mav  occupy 
all  the  regions  which  should  serve  as  a  guaranty  for  the  execu- 
tion of  the  treaty  which  you  will  make.' 

"Mr.  Clemenceau  replied:    'That  is  no  business  of  yours.' 

"Do  you  wish  me  to  tell  you  about  the  Armistice?  It  has 
been  told  so  often!     Very  well;   I'll  tell  you  that  when  I  saw 


APPENDIX   B  437 

them  entering  this  car,  Erzberger  and  the  two  others,  accom- 
panied by  a  naval  officer  whose  name  I  have  completely  for- 
gotten, I  had  a  moment  of  emotion.  I  said  to  myself,  'Here  is 
Germany.  Very  well,  since  it  is  coming  to  me,  I  will  treat  it 
as  it  deserves.  It  is  beaten.  I  will  be  stiff,  cold,  but  without 
rancor  or  rudeness.' 

"I  had  reached  Rethonde  at  six  in  the  evening,  where  my 
train  was  put  on  a  siding.  Next  morning  a  train  arrived  very 
slowly,  pushed  from  behind.  It  was  the  German  train.  They 
laid  a  footbridge  between  the  two  trains  because  it  was  very 
muddy.  An  instant  later  Weygand  entered  and  told  me  that 
the  German  plenipotentiaries  were  at  hand.  Erzberger  comes 
first,  and  presents  the  others  in  a  fairly  indistinct  voice.  It's 
translated.  I  say:  'Gentlemen,  have  you  your  credentials? 
We'll  examine  their  validity.'  They  show  me  papers  signed 
by  Max  of  Baden.  We  consider  them  satisfactory.  I  turn  to 
Erzberger  and  say  to  him:  'What  do  you  desire  of  me?'  'We 
have  come,'  he  answers,  'to  receive  communications  of  the  con- 
ditions on  which  you  wish  to  make  the  Armistice.' 

"I  answer:  'I  have  no  communication  to  make  to  you.  _  If 
you  have  any  request  to  present  to  me,  make  it.'  And  he  gives 
some  more  explanations.  I  say  to  him:  'Do  you  ask  for  an 
armistice?'  He  answers  me:  'We  ask  it.'  I  reply:  'Then  I  will 
inform  you  through  my  intermediary  upon  what  conditions  the 
allied  governments  consent  to  grant  the  Armistice.' 

"We  sit  down  in  the  next  car  where  my  officers  were. 
Admiral  Wemyss  at  my  right,  Weygand  at  my  left,  and  opposite 
me  Erzberger,  between  Oberdorf  and  Winterfeldt.  Weygand 
read  them  the  conditions,  which  were  translated  piece  by  piece. 
"I  saw  them  collapse.  Winterfeldt  was  very  pale.  I  even 
think  he  was  crying.  After  the  reading,  I  add  at  once:  'Gen- 
tlemen, I  leave  this  text  with  you ;  you  have  72  hours  to  answer 
in.  During  that  time  you  can  present  me  comments  of  detail.' 
"Then  Erzberger  became  piteous.  'Monsieur  le  marechal,  I 
pray  you  will  not  wait  for  72  hours.  Stop  the  hostilities  to- 
day. Our  armies  are  the  prey  of  anarchy;  bolshevism  threatens 
them:  this  bolshevism  may  spread  over  Germany,  over  all 
central  Europe,  and  threaten  even  France  herself.' 

"I  don't  budge.  I  reply:  'I  don't  know  what  condition  your 
armies  are  in ;  I  only  know  the  state  of  my  own.  Not  only  can 
I  not  stop  the  offensive,  but  I  will  give  the  order  to  push  it 
with  redoubled  energy.' 

"Then  Winterfeldt  takes  it  up.  He  had  notes  in  front  of  him 
and  he  had  carefully  got  up  his  case. 

"  'It  is  necessary,'  said  he  to  me,  'that  our  chiefs-of -staff 
should  confer  and  talk  over  together  all  the  details  of  execution. 
How  can  they?  How  can  they  onmmuni"ate  if  the  hostilities 
continue?     I  request  you  to  stop  the  hostilities.' 

"I  answered  him :  'These  technical  discussions  will  be  en- 
tirely in  order  in  72  hours.  From  now  until  then  hostilities 
will  continue.' 


438  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

"They  withdrew.  As  for  me,  I  send  an  order  to  all  the  allied 
armies,  a  last  call  to  the  courage  and  energy  of  all.  All  the 
commanders-in-chief  returned  me  an  enthusiastic  answer: 
'Count  on  us,  we  shall  not  stop.' 

"I  skip  the  three  following  days.  The  Germans  attempted 
submersion,  submersion  by  means  of  notes.  Weygand  received 
them  and  transmitted  them  to  me." 

Here  the  marshal  with  a  smile  of  kindness  and  recognition 
interrupted  himself  to  speak  of  his  colleagues. 

"They  are,"  he  said  to  me,  "crack-a -jacks.  Ah,  how  well  they 
know  their  business!  And  when  there  was  talk  of  sending 
Weygand  to  Poland,  and  somebody  said  that  he  had  never  been 
in  command,  I  said:    'Don't  worry,  he'll  know  what  to  do.' 

"On  the  evening  of  the  10th  I  remind  the  Germans  that  they 
must  sign  the  next  day.  They  receive  a  long  message  from 
Hindenburg  telling  them  to  sign;  but  the  revolution  breaks  out 
in  Berlin,  and  I  tell  them:  'Who  do  you  represent  now?'  They 
show  me  a  telegram  from  President  Ebert,  a  cipher  telegram 
which  was  signed  '606.'  I  don't  know  why.  This  telegram 
satisfied  their  authority. 

"During  the  night  of  the  10th  I  didn't  sleep  much. 

"I  was  resting  between  midnight  and  one  o'clock,  and  then 
the  Germans  arrived.  I  allowed  them  5,000  mitrailleuses,  and 
some  camions.  That  was  all.  At  5.15  they  signed  in  heavy, 
furious  handwriting.     At  seven  o'clock  I  left  for  Paris. 

"At  nine  I  was  with  M.  Clemenceau.  He  was  not  particularly 
amiable.  He  was  growling.  He  asked  me  if  I  had  yielded  to 
the  Germans  .  .  .  but  no  matter  about  that  ...  I  told  him 
that  at  eleven  o'clock  the  cannon  must  be  fired  to  announce  the 
end  of  hostilities.  He  wanted  it  to  be  at  four  in  the  afternoon 
at  the  moment  he  should  mount  the  tribune  in  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies.  I  told  him  that  the  allied  armies  had  been  advised 
since  the  night  by  my  order;  that  at  eleven  o'clock  the  last 
shot  would  be  fired,  and  the  whole  world  would  know  it. 

"On  this  M.  Barthou,  M.  Neil,  and  others  entered  his  study 
and  backed  me  up.  He  consented  to  have  the  cannon  fired  at 
eleven  o'clock. 

"I  said  to  him :    'My  work  is  done.   Yours  begins.' " 

Sauerwein:  But  was  it  really  over,  your  work?  After  beat- 
ing Germany  wasn't  it  your  duty  to  give  advice  as  to  the 
peace? 

Foch  :  I  don't  know  if  it  was  my  duty,  or  rather  I  believe 
it  was,  and  that's  what  I  understood ;  but  I  never  was  given  the 
right. 

"I  often  saw  M.  Clemenceau  and  I  sent  him  three  written 
notes.  But  let  me  tell  you  the  end  which  will  explain  the  begin- 
ning to  you.  The  peace  which  they  proposed  to  sign — I  spoke 
to  you  about  it  at  the  time — seemed  bad  to  me.  I  summed  it  up 
thus:  neither  frontiers  nor  pledges. 

"For  the  security  of  France  the  frontier  of  the  Rhine  was 
needed,  a  military  frontier,  you  understand,  not  a  political  one. 


APPENDIX   B  439 

For  the  reparations  due  France  I  demanded  the  occupation 
of  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine  until  the  full  compliance  with  the 
treaty  was  consummated,  because  in  my  opinion  that  was  the 
only  way  to  secure  those  reparations. 

"In  the  month  of  April,  the  7th,  I  think,  I  was  allowed  to  be 
heard  at  the  council  of  ministers.  I  had  vainly  asked  to  be 
heard  by  the  French  delegation.  They  refused  me.  I  recall 
that  council  of  ministers.  I  came  there  with  M.  Jules  Cambon 
and  Tardieu.  I  asked  at  first  if  they  kept  no  minutes.  It 
appears  that  this  was  not  the  custom.  Then,  as  I  had  com- 
mitted my  remarks  to  paper,  I  gave  a  copy  to  each  minister  and 
then  began  to  speak  and  develop  my  theme:  no  guaranties, 
no  security. 

"M.  Poincare  supported  me,  he  alone,  I  must  acknowledge  it. 
After  that  they  begged  me  to  retire.  Going  out,  I  said  to  M. 
Tardieu  before  M.  Cambon: 

"  'Some  day  there  will  be  a  High  Court  to  judge  us,  because 
France  will  never  understand  how  we  came  to  make  a  failure 
out  of  victory.  On  that  day  I  want  to  present  myself  with  a 
tranquil  conscience  and  my  papers  in  order.' 

"I  made  one  more  attempt.  It  was  at  the  full  session  of  the 
6th  of  May,  when  they  gave  to  the  allied  powers  the  treaty 
which  had  been  finished  during  the  night.  The  Portuguese,  and 
others  whom  I  don't  recall,  protested.  Then  I  got  up  and  de- 
veloped my  theme  once  more.  They  listened,  nobody  said  a 
word,  and  the  session  rose. 

"While  they  were  taking  tea  in  the  adjoining  room  I  found 
M.  Clemenceau  and  said: 

"  'I  had  the  honor  to  ask  a  question,  and  I  should  be  glad 
of  an  answer.' 

"Then  I  saw  him  talk  animatedly  a  moment  with  M.  Wilson 
and  M.  Lloyd  George.     Then  he  came  back  to  me  and  declared: 

"  'Our  answer  is,  that  there  is  no  answer.' 

"I  replied: 

"  'Monsieur  the  President,  I  am  asking  myself  if  I  will  ac- 
company you  tomorrow  to  Versailles.  I  find  myself  facing  a 
case  of  conscience,  the  gravest  that  I  have  ever  known  in  my 
existence.  I  repudiate  that  treaty,  and  I  do  not  wish  to  par- 
ticipate in  the  responsibility  by  sitting  beside  you.' 

"He  was  not  pleased,  and  urged  me  to  come.  In  the  evening 
he  sent  M.  John  Dupuy  to  me,  who  held  a  long  discourse  with 
real  emotion.  Then  I  said  to  myself:  'The  Allied  governments 
are  going  to  present  themselves  before  Germany  to  impose  a 
treaty  upon  her.  Is  it  possible  for  them  to  present  themselves 
without  their  armies,  without  the  chief  of  their  armies?  I 
haven't  the  right.  It  would  be  to  weaken  them  in  the  presence 
of  the  enemy. 

"At  Versailles  I  found  myself  by  M.  Klotz.  When  the  cere- 
mony of  delivery  was  over,  I  said:  'Monsieur  Minister  of  the 
Finances  of  the  French  Republic,  with  such  a  treaty  you  can 
present  yourself  at  the  bank  of  the  German  Empire  and  you 


440  NEIGHBORS   HENCEFORTH 

will  be  paid  in  fake  money.'  M.  Klotz  replied  acrimoniously, 
'That  is  not  my  custom.' 

"  'It  will  be  your  custom,'  I  retorted. 

"And  those  are  the  people,"  concluded  Marshal  Foch,  looking 
sadly  at  his  pipe,  "those  are  the  peoole  to  whom  I  said: 

"  'Make  what  peace  you  wish,  I'll  take  care  that  it's  per- 
formed.' " 

Sauerwein:  It  looks  as  if  the  head  of  our  government  did 
not  love  you  to  excess. 

Foch:  What  can  you  do?  I  don't  know  if  he  liked  me,  but 
he  did  not  show  it.  I  recall  a  council  of  war  in  London,  the 
14th  of  March,  1918.  I  had  been  nominated  commander-in-chief 
of  the  reserve  army,  which  didn't  exist  much.  At  that  meeting 
I  a*ked  the  English  to  contribute  effectives  to  this  army. 

"Marshal  Haig  declared  to  me.  in  the  name  of  the  English 
Government,  which  was  principally  represented  by  Mr.  Lloyd 
George,  that  it  was  impossible.  I  was  going  to  answer  sharply 
when 

"  'Be  quiet,'  said  M.  Clemenceau  vigorously  to  me,  'I'm  speak- 
ing in  the  name  of  the  French  Government,  and  I  declare  that 
I  accept  Marshal  Haig's  answer.' " 

He^e,  writes  M.  Sauerwein,  Foch  smiled,  and  that  violent 
incident  seems  to  have  left  not  the  slightest  bitterness. 

"I  said  to  myself,"  continued  Foch,  "wait.  Tomorrow  I'll 
say  something.  And  next  day  when  the  council  was  on  the  point 
of  separating,  I  spoke,  and  I  was  not  cut  short  this  time.  I 
declared  that  a  formidable  offensive  was  preparing,  and  I  added 
that  I  knew  what  allieH  battles  were.  I've  taken  part  at  the 
Marne  and  in  Italv.  Here  is  what  the  liaisons  ought  to  be 
(I  said)  and  here  is  the  way  to  play  team-work,  those  are  the 
precautions  to  be  taken,  &c,  &c.  I  assure  you  (I  said  to  them) 
that  nothing  is  ready  to  resist  the  offensive  and  that  it  may 
be  a  disaster. 

"They  were  impressed  all  the  same.  And  a  few  days  after- 
wards at  Com^i^fme  and  Donllens  thev  remembered  me.  [This 
was  when  Gough's  army  had  been  defeated.] 

"At  Donllens  there  were  Lord  Milner,  Marshal  Haig,  M. 
Poincare,  M.  Clemenceau,  M.  Loucheur,  and  General  Petain.  I 
was  not  satisfied.  From  what  I  could  learn,  General  Petain 
was  getting  readv  to  retire  on  Paris.  General  Haig  to  the  west. 
It  was  the  onen  door  for  Germany — it  was  defeat. 

"Marshal  T*aie\  snnnorted  bv  Lord  Milnpr,  said  there  must 
be  a  responsible  head  and  unity  of  command.     I  was  proposed. 

"  'We  can,'  said  Clemenceau,  'give  to  Marshal  Foch  the  com- 
mand of  the  armies  operating  round  Amiens.' 

"Marshal  Haig  was  the  one  who  onnosed  this  and  declared 
that  there  was  onlv  one  sensible  solution,  which  was  to  give 
me  the  command  of  the  armies  on  the  west  front.  M.  Clemen- 
ceau bowed,  and  it  was  decided. 

"At  lnnch,  which  followed.  M.  Clemenceau  said  to  me: 

"  'Well,  you  have  it,  the  place  you  wanted!' 


APPENDIX   B  441 

"I  lost  patience  a  little;  I  answered: 

"'What,  Mr.  President!  You  give  me  a  lost  battle  and  you 
ask  me  to  retrieve  it.  I  accept,  and  you've  the  idea  that  you've 
made  me  a  present?  It  requires  my  entire  self-effacement  to 
accept  in  such  circumstances.' " 


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